Fernie Formation Rock Creek Member in British Columbia

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Fernie Formation Rock Creek Member in British Columbia Ed Janicki, Akindele Balogun British Columbia Ministry of Natural gas Development Victoria, British Columbia The Rock Creek Member (Fernie Formation) of Middle Jurassic (Bajocian) age in British Columbia describes a sequence of siltstones and quartzitic sandstones stratigraphically placed between black Poker Chip Shale and the dark Upper Fernie Shale. It was deposited at the northeastern edge of an eastward thinning wedge of Jurassic sediment. Uplift and erosion during the Columbian orogeny limits its extent northeast of the Peace River Block. Its distribution and quality also appears to be influenced by structural features such as the Fox Creek Escarpment and reactivation of deep-seated block faults along the Peace River Arch. Wherever the sand quality is poor, or non-existent, the Rock Creek becomes indistinguishable from the upper part of the Fernie Formation. Relatively clean sand, with a distinctive log signature, appears to be deposited in two or three separate linear trends possibly representative of sub-tidal shoals flowing down from a sloping Jurassic shelf. Previous work points to uncertainty as to the age equivalency of the Rock Creek in British Columbia to sandstones in a similar stratigraphic position mapped throughout central and southern Alberta. Its distribution and quality in British Columbia suggests a more distal source than for the similar sand found in central Alberta. The thickest and cleanest Rock Creek sands occur largely in the same areas currently being exploited for Triassic shale gas. Thick Rock Creek sands may present possible attractive economic enhancements when juxtaposed with organic rich Fernie shales. GeoConvention 2015: New Horizons 1 .

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Tectonic setting of the lower Fernie Formation: insights from subsidence analysis Tannis McCartney*, Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada [email protected] and Andrew Leier, Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Introduction In this study, the Fernie Formation in west-central Alberta is informally divided into upper and lower Fernie. The lower Fernie contains the Nordegg, Gordondale, Red Deer, Poker Chip and Rock Creek Members. These are separated from the Upper Fernie shales by many unconformities, simplified here as a single regional unconformity (Figure 1). Figure 1: Simplified stratigraphic column of the Fernie Formation. In this study, the Fernie Formation is divided into the Upper Fernie (shales) and the lower Fernie (Rock Creek, Poker Chip Shale, and Nordegg). The unconformities separating the Upper Fernie from the lower Fernie are here represented as a single, regional unconformity. The Nordegg and Gordondale Members of the Fernie Formation were deposited during the early stages of tectonic loading in the Cordillera to the west. These members, along with the Poker Chip and Rock Creek Members, were studied to look for evidence of this tectonic activity in the sedimentary record. The results give new insights into current understandings of the lower Fernie Formation. Theory and Method Tectonic subsidence measures the tectonically controlled vertical movement of a basin. Calculating the amount of tectonic subsidence the basin has undergone involves accounting for sediment compaction, paleobathymetry, sea-level changes and post-depositional sediment compaction. GeoConvention 2012: Vision 1 In basin analysis, tectonic subsidence plotted on a depth vs. age chart is used to classify the type of basin the sediments were deposited in.
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