Structural and Topographic Control of Oil and Gas in the Cambrian Rose Run and Beekmantown Strata, East-Central Ohio

LESSER, GUSTAVO, Kent State University, Kent, OH

Structural and stratigraphic analyses of subsurface data in eastern Ohio show the interplay of structural and paleotopographic controls on the occurrence of economic Cambrian Beekmantown Dolomite and Rose Run Sandstone wells.

Structure on the Knox unconformity surface consists of two principal components. The first is the southeasterly dip of approximately 100 ft/mi of the eroded surface. This surface is broken by a northwest-southeast-trending fault system, which results in differential block subsidence and tilting. The anticlinal and synclinal "noses" displayed on conventionally contoured structure maps are the upper and lower corners and edges of these tilted blocks. Records from Coshocton County show that wells in a high structural position are most productive. The highest structural position is interpreted here to be at the edges or corners of the upthrown fault blocks. Moderately productive gas wells occur in other structural positions in combination with Beekmantown paleotopographic mesa-like remnan s, which preserve and protect the underlying Rose Run reservoirs.

Three guides to traps in the Rose Run-Beekmantown couplet are (1) determining the location of the major northwest-southeast-trending faults that perpendicularly intersect the northeast-trending Beekmantown-Rose Run subcrop trend, (2) determining the associated faults that closely parallel on this trend, and (3) determining the configuration of the tilted blocks to find the highest structural position at the block edge. Because the structural surfaces on the shallower stratigraphic horizons, including the intensely drilled Silurian Clinton Sandstone and the Devonian Big Lime, also reflect the traces of the same major faults and associated structural highs, maps of these surfaces can be used for analyzing deeper Cambrian structure.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91005 © 1991 Eastern Section Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 8-10, 1991 (2009)