SAXON, CHRISTOPHER PAUL, Baylor Univ., Bryan, TX

ABSTRACT: Structural Analysis of the Northwest Plunge of the Arbuckle Anticline, Southern Oklahoma

An understanding of structural style and geometry is extremely important to exploration, exploitation, and development of hydrocarbons. No consensus exists for the southern Oklahoma foreland despite extensive well and outcrop data. Within the Arbuckle Mountain front, little agreement exists as location, geometry, sense of movement, and relationships of major faults, as well as basic structural style. This paper attempts to integrate field, subsurface well control, and seismic data in a consistent manner in order to clarify these relationships analysis of a series of balanced cross sections across the Arbuckle Mountain front from the West Timbered Hills area westward through Eola, Roberson, and Royal Pool fields show that fault-bend folding, with slightly oblique slip motion on the Arb ckle thrust, best explains observed structural data. Thrust displacement decreases westward from its maximum of eight miles in the West Timbered Hills area of the exposed Arbuckle anticline. There is a corresponding change in geometry from that of a fault-bend fold to that of a fault-propagation fold. Footwall deformation in the Eola area has folded the overlying Arbuckle thrust. During a previously unaddressed period of post-compression extension, a larger normal fault reactivated the earlier basement ramp of the Arbuckle thrust, backing the hanging wall down the fault. Such structures have resulted in "beheaded" basement blocks similar to those found in the Wyoming foreland. These structures may be mis-interpreted as "flower" structures and give rise to a philosophy of local wrenching. /P>

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90987©1993 AAPG Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 25-28, 1993.