Amarillo, Texas—Home of World Class Production and World Class Geology

G. Wilson and C. Bright
Sunlight Exploration Inc., Amarillo, Texas

The Giant Panhandle Gas Field (33 TCF) was discovered in 1918, by the Amarillo Oil Company Masterson #1 well drilled 21 miles north of Amarillo Texas on the John Ray Dome. Charles Gould discovered the surface structure in 1902 while travelling along the Canadian River in a covered wagon and later convinced a group of Amarillo businessmen to drill the structure. Potter County exploration was dominated by surface geology and other surface structures proved productive including the large Bush Dome which is the U.S.BLM Cliffside Helium Storage Facility, a 700 BCF accumulation which has produced 106 BCF of gas to make room for Helium storage.

Structurally the area is very complex, being underlain by the Amarillo-Wichita Mountains, which were divided by the Whittenburg Trough, a pull-apart graben that separates the Bush-Amarillo Dome from the John Ray Dome and the primary portion of the Amarillo Uplift. The south boundary of the continued tectonism of the Amarillo Uplift is the Potter-County Fault which also is the south boundary of the Panhandle Field in Potter and Carson Counties, Texas. The Bush-Amarillo Dome is the true southern boundary of the Amarillo Uplift and lies adjacent to the Palo Duro Basin.

Episodic graben subsidence in the Whittenburg Trough duringVirgillian time accumulated arkosic detritus and thick organic facies which are predominately terrestrially derived. Generated gas migrated within and outside the basin following non-sealing faults and fractures primarily into theWolfcampian Brown Dolomite and Leonardian Red Cave Sands. The area also represents the structural apex of the Palo Duro Basin hydrocarbon migration, primarily from oilprone source-beds adjacent to the Pennsylvanian Canyon Reef.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90903©2001 AAPG Mid-Continent Meeting, Amarillo, Texas