--> Pre–Chattanooga (Devonian-Mississippian Black Shale) Structure and Nashville (Trenton)-Stones River (Black River) Hydrocarbon Production in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Southwestern Virginia Hatcher, Robert D. Jr., Evenick, Jonathan C.,  and Weyland, H. Virginia #90044 (2005).

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Pre–Chattanooga (Devonian-Mississippian Black Shale) Structure and Nashville (Trenton)-Stones River (Black River) Hydrocarbon Production in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Southwestern Virginia

 

Hatcher, Robert D. Jr. 1, Evenick, Jonathan C. 1,  and Weyland, H. Virginia 2

1Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

2U.S. Department of Energy, National Petroleum Technology Office

 

The Nashville (Trenton) and Stones (Black) River Groups comprise one of the major petroleum systems in the Appalachian basin, and have been productive for decades.  Reservoirs in Tennessee, Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia are in limestones of variable porosity (both primary and secondary), with oil production most commonly from the lower and upper Stones River Group (Murfreesboro and Lebanon) and middle Nashville Group (Bigby-Cannon).  A disconformity with variable amounts of erosion separates the two groups.  Some areas that should be productive are not, while others for which geologic data exist that should not be productive turn out to be productive.  An additional variable is compressional structures that formed prior to formation of the pre-Chattanooga (Devonian-Mississippian black shale) unconformity.  These structures consist of folds and faults truncated by the unconformity, and are most easily documented on the surface.  Numerous examples are published in Tennessee Division of Geology quadrangle geologic maps, and we have also mapped them in the subsurface beneath the eastern Highland Rim and Cumberland Plateau where adequate well control exists.  These structures were tilted by subsequent uplift on the Nashville dome and Cincinnati arch, superposing a southeast regional dip that in some cases may cause spilling of potential traps, in others increasing the opportunities for survival of hydrocarbons.  These structures should be considered as possible additional structural traps throughout the Appalachian basin.