--> Preliminary Interpretation of the Pressure Architecture in Parts of Northern Louisiana, Southern Arkansas, and Eastern Texas, Jim Puckette, #90093 (2009)

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Preliminary Interpretation of the Pressure Architecture

in Parts of Northern Louisiana, Southern Arkansas,

and Eastern Texas

 

 

Jim Puckette

 

School of Geology, 105 NRC, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma  74078

  

  

ABSTRACT

 

Reservoir pressure data from parts of northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas were plotted against depth to construct a preliminary interpretation of the pressure architecture in the region including the Sabine Uplift and North Louisiana Salt Basin.  In the western part of the North Louisiana Salt Basin and on the Sabine Uplift, a tiered architecture develops in which a normally pressured (hydropressured) interval occurs in the Hosston Formation and shallower section above the Cotton Valley Group, the Cotton Valley Group and Haynesville Formation are geopressured, and porous carbonates in the underlying Smackover Formation are hydropressured.  However, deeper siliciclastic-dominated intervals in the Smackover Formation located in Bossier and Webster parishes were found to be geopressured with pressure-depth gradients reaching 0.8 psi/ft (18.1 kPa/m).  In eastern Texas, highly permeable Smackover carbonates are hydropressured (0.47 psi/ft [10.62 kPa/m]) to depths exceeding 12,600 ft (3840 m).  In the same region, the Bossier and Haynesville shales are geopressured with gradients exceeding 0.8 psi/ft (18.1 kPa/m).  The tiered configuration is evident in Bienville, Lincoln, and Clairborne parishes where geopressured reservoirs within the Cotton Valley Group occur above hydropressured reservoirs in the Smackover.  In Winn and Jackson parishes, reservoirs within the Cotton Valley Group are overpressured, but pressure measurements for the deeper Smackover were not available.

 

The onset of geopressure occurs approximately 9000 to 10,000 ft (2740 to 3050 m) below surface and stratigraphically coincides with lower permeability lithofacies within the Cotton Valley Group.  Hydropressured Smackover carbonates below the geopressured zone have high permeability as evidenced by production and drill stem tests.  In other tiered basin such as the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, deep hydropressured carbonates occur to depths exceeding 20,000 ft (6100 m), whereas shallower siliciclastic-dominated intervals are geopressured.  It is proposed that hydropressured reservoirs maintained hydraulic connectivity to the surface or shallow strata and vented pressure formed by hydrocarbon generation and/or transformation.

 

Puckette, J., 2009, Preliminary interpretation of the pressure architecture in parts of northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas:  Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions, v. 59, p. 607-620.

 

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90093 © 2009 GCAGS 59th Annual Meeting, Shreveport, Louisiana