Evaluating Depositional Complexity and Compartmentalization of the Rose Run Sandstone (upper Cambrian) in Eastern Ohio

Mihir Pradip Shah and James E. Evans
Department of Geology,
Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, Ohio, 43403 United States. [email protected]

The upper Cambrian Rose Run Sandstone in eastern Ohio includes mixed siliciclastic and carbonate lithofacies, deposited in a shallow marine tidally influenced environment. A study of 17 wells including 4 cores with total thickness of 21 m, reveals 14 siliciclastic and 5 carbonate lithofacies. Intertidal deposits include heterolithic wavy bedded sandstone and mudstone, heterolithic lenticular bedded sandstone and mudstone, heterolithic flaser bedded sandstone and mudstone, interbedded planar laminated sandstone and mudstone, and massive mottled sandstone. The presence of vugs filled with chert in dolostone and mud cracks suggest exposure of the unit under supratidal conditions. Subtidal clastic deposits include medium-scale planar tabular cross-bedded sandstone, herringbone cross-bedded sandstone, massive sandstone, glauconite-rich sandstones, hummocky stratified sandstone, massive mudstone, and laminated mudstone. Interbedded carbonates include dolo-mudstones, bioturbated and mottled dolomudstones, dolo-packstones with rip-up clasts, dolo-packstones with mud drapes (“cryptalgal lamination”), and convoluted bedded mudstone in dolo-mudstone. The carbonates are interpreted to be deposited from in peritidal to environments.

Subsurface maps and log correlation profiles brings out depositional complexity as one of major reasons for compartmentalization of Rose Run Sandstone in the study area. Depositional complexity favors strati-structural traps for hydrocarbon accumulation as sand pinches out in the up-dip direction.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90181©2013 AAPG/SEG Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, September 27-30, 2013