--> ABSTRACT: Development and Distribution of Rival Reservoirs in Central Williston Basin, Western North Dakota, by Michael L. Hendricks; #91033 (2010)

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Development and Distribution of Rival Reservoirs in Central Williston Basin, Western North Dakota

Michael L. Hendricks

The Mississippian Rival (Nesson) beds in the central Williston basin, North Dakota, are a limestone to evaporite regressive sequence. Progradation of the depositional system produced several distinct shallowing-upward genetic units. Cyclicity in Rival beds was produced by periodic fluctuations in sea level.

Rival oil reservoirs are porous and permeable packstones and grainstones. The dominant allochems in these reservoir rocks are peloids and skeletal and algal fragments. These sediments were deposited along carbonate shorelines and within algal banks that developed basinward of shorelines. The trapping mechanism along shorelines is a lithofacies change from limestone to anhydrite.

Algal banks are locally productive along paleostructural trends where bathymetric shallowing produced shoals dominated by the Codiacean alga Ortonella. Algal banks are flanked by impermeable carbonate mudstones and wackestones deposited in interbank and protected shelf environments.

Two distinct Rival bank trends occur in the central basin: a northwest-southeast trend in McKenzie and Williams Counties, North Dakota, parallel with the Cedar Creek anticline, and a northeast-southwest trend along the Nesson anticline and the northeast flank of the basin, parallel with the Weldon-Brockton fault trend.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91033©1988 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section, Bismarck, North Dakota, 21-24 August 1988