Characteristics of the Upper Cretaceous Baxter Shale in the Vermillion Basin, Northwestern Colorado
Kaiser, Kimberley1, Erika Davis1, Richard Newhart2, Mark
Longman3, and Randy Koepsell4
1Questar Exploration and
Production, Denver, CO
2Questar Exploration and Production
Co, Salt Lake City
3Questar, Denver, CO
4Schlumberger,
Greenwood Village, CO
The overpressured Coniacian to Campanian-aged Baxter Shale
overlies the Frontier Sandstone and is about 2500 ft thick. This darkgray
shale forms the reservoir in a developing shale gas play in the
Vermillion Basin of northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming.
Cores were cut in the Baxter Shale in the Hiawatha Deep #5 well at
depths of 12,343 to 12,390 ft and 12,951 to 13,005 ft. The cores
reveal lithologies ranging from relatively pure, laminated shales to
thin (<1 inch), planar to rippled, interbedded very fine sandstones,
siltstones, and shales interpreted as hyperpycnal deposits. The
laminated shales contain 0.5 to 2% total organic carbon. Burrowing is
rare or absent suggesting that most deposition occurred under anoxic
conditions on a relatively deep sea floor.
The shale-rich and siltstone-rich intervals both contain quartz
(28 to 45%), calcite (6 to 28%), dolomite (4 to 18%), plagioclase (4 to
13%), authigenic pyrite (0.5 to 3.5%), and traces of other minerals.
Clay content ranges from 12.8 to 37%, dominated by illite (5-23%)
and chlorite (6 to 12%).
Core plugs from shales and siltstones have from 3.6 to 6%
measured porosity and crushed-rock pressure-decay permeabilities of
52 to 115 nanodarcies. With such low permeability, natural fractures
may play an important role in production. The natural fractures
present in the core are of four types: 1) single-stage calcite-filled
vertical; 2) single-stage oblique calcite-filled; 3) oblique partially
open; and 4) multi-stage (or reactivated) oblique calcite-filled. Healed
natural fractures reveal a distinctive “electrical halo” response on the
image log that can be tied to healed fractures seen in the core.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90071 © 2007 AAPG Rocky Mountain Meeting, Snowbird, Utah