Cotton Valley (Upper Jurassic)And Hosston(Lower Cretaceous) Depositional Systemsand Their Influence Onsalt Tectonics Intheeast Texasbasin by Mary K
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Cotton Valley (Upper Jurassic)and Hosston(Lower Cretaceous) Depositional Systemsand Their Influence onSalt Tectonics intheEast TexasBasin By Mary K. McGowen and David W. Harris Reprintedfrom The Jurassic of the Gulf Rim: Proceedingsofthe ThirdAnnualResearch Conference, Gulf Coast Section, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Foundation,1984 1984 BUREAUOFECONOMIC GEOLOGY W. L.Fisher, Director The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78713 Geological Circular 84-5 Cotton Valley (Upper Jurassic)and Hosston(Lower Cretaceous) Depositional Systemsand Their Influence onSalt Tectonics intheEast TexasBasin By Mary K. McGowen and David W. Harris Assisted by Cynthia Lopez andKeith Pollman Reprintedfrom The Jurassicof the GulfRim,edited by WilliamP.S. Ventress,Don G.Bebout,Bob F.Perkins,and Clyde H.Moore:Proceedingsof the ThirdAnnualResearchConference, GulfCoast Section,SocietyofEconomic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Foundation,1984 Fundingprovided by the U.S. Department of Energyunder Contract No. DE-AC97-80ET46617 1984 BUREAUOFECONOMIC GEOLOGY W. L.Fisher,Director The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78713 Cotton Valley (Upper Jurassic)and Hosston (Lower Cretaceous) Depositional Systemsand Theirin theInfluenceEast TexasonBasinSalt Tectonics Mary K.McGowen ARCO Oil and Gas Company P.O. Box 2819 Dallas, Texas 75221 David W. Harris Marathon Oil Company P.O. Box 2659 Casper, Wyoming 82602 Abstract mature drainage system had not yet formed. The Cotton Valley Group, which is Correct interpretation of the effect of basin thought to be a fan-delta system, can be sub- infilling on salt mobilization is critical to divided into three types of facies: prodelta understanding salt dome growth and stability. deposits, delta-front deposits, and braided The size of salt structures in the East Texas fluvial deposits. Fan deltas, supplied by Basin is determined by the original thick- braided streams, prograded from the north, ness of the underlying Louann Salt (Middle northwest, and west. Dip-oriented sandstone "Jurassic): that is, salt structures distinct- trends dominate in the northwestern part of ly increase in size toward the interior of the basin and change basinward to northeast the basin. Initial movement of salt appar- to southwest strike-oriented trends. ently occurred in the marginal areas of the During Hosston time, sedimentation in basin during Smackover (Late Jurassic) depo- the northwestern part of the basin was domi- sition. This movement seems to have resulted nantly fluvial. The depositional character- from downward creep that was induced by lead- istics of sediments in this area are typical ing of carbonate units and was enhanced oy of braided streams. In the study area, par- basinward tilting. allel net-sandstone and sediment thicks are During a major shift from carbonate to clearly defined in the distal part of the clastic sedimentation in the Late Jurassic, Cotton Valley but are not as well defined in salt movement became more extensive. This the Hosston. This suggests that ioost deltaic salt migration was caused by uneven sediment sedimentation during Hosston time occurred loading of fluvial-deltaic systems in the basinward of the study area. A major trans- Cotton Valley Group (Upper Jurassic) and the gression at the end of Hosston time resulted Hosston Formation (Lower Cretaceous). Terri- in deposition of the Pettet Limestone. genous source areas to the west and north Apparently, the location of salt domes persisted throughout Cotton Valley and Hoss- and salt anticlines was controlled by the po- ton time. elastics v/ere delivered to the sition of the Smackover-Giimer carbonate East Texas Basin by many small streams, platform. This platform impeded local subsi- rather than by one major stream, because a dence to the extent that fan-delta sediments GCSSEPM Foundation Third Annual Research Conference Proceedings, March 1984 213 214 The Jurassic of the Gulf Rim of the Cotton Valley Group spread laterally west and north into the basin (McGowen and across the shelf rather than stacked verti- Harris, 1981) and second, because deep-well- cally. Sediment depocenters formed prefer- control, seismic, and gravity data were entially basinward of the platform, resulting available. in migration of the underlying salt into Salt movement began at different times ridges that fronted the prograding sediment in different parts of the basin. The earli- wedge. As the salt was depleted under these est movement occurred around the margins of depocenters, subsidence slowed and thereby the basin during Smackover deposition (Jack- allowed the fan deltas to override the salt son and Harris, 1981). At that time, in- ridges. This resulted in a basinward progra- creased subsidence toward the center of the dation of deltaic depocenters and produced basin caused basinward tilting that, induced younger depocenters toward the interior of by downward creep, mobilized salt. the basin. Further salt migration and dif- More extensive salt movement occurred ferentiation of salt ridges produced the after the influx of Cotton Valley clastic present complex array of salt domes and anti- sediment during the Late Jurassic (Fig. 1). clines of the East Texas Basin. Seismic and Before that time, deposition in the East Tex- gravity data clearly demonstrate the exis- as Basin was dominated by carbonates, evapor- tence of these salt ridges and intervening ites, and marine mudstones and claystones. sediment thicks. Salt movement apparently was controlled by differential loading of Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous fluvial-deltaic systems, as Introduction well as by the position of the subjacent Smackover-Gilmer carbonate shelf complex The Cotton Valley Group (Upper Jurassic) (Jackson and Harris, 1981; McGowen and Har- and Hosston Formation (Lower Cretaceous) were ris, 1981) . studied as part of the East Texas Waste Iso- lation project being conducted by the Bureau Data Base of Economic Geology for the U. S. Department of Energy. The purpose of the project is to Electric logs from 232 wells (Fig. 2) , assess the suitability of salt domes in the supplemented by Bouguer residual gravity maps East Texas Basin as potential repositories and two dip-oriented, six-fold conventional for nuclear waste; this suitability is con- CDP seismic profiles, served as a data base tingent on the tectonic stability of the for this study. When possible, well data domes. The objective of the present analysis were integrated with seismic data by using was to investigate the effect of early basin velocity conversion tables. Five seismic re- infilling on salt mobilization in the East flectors within the Mesozoic were used, in- Texas Basin. Understanding the mechanisms cluding the base of the Louann Salt, the top responsible for early salt movement is essen- of the Louann Salt, the top of the Gilmer tial to predicting domal growth evolution and Limestone (Cotton Valley Limestone) (Forgotson ultimate stability. and Forgotson, 1976), and the top of the Pet- An area in the northwestern part of the tet Limestone (Table 1). The fifth reflect- East — Texas Basin consisting of seven coun- or, which we believe is the top of the Mas- ties Hunt, Hopkins, Wood,— Rains, Kaufman, sive Anhydrite, was used in the northern part Van Zandt, and Henderson was selected for of the basin, where the Pettet Formation the study of the relationship between salt changes lithologically from a limestone fa- movement and the influx of Upper Jurassic cies to a sandy facies and thereby loses its terrigenous clastic sediment. The study area character as a distinct seismic reflector. was chosen for two reasons: first, because The Louann Salt is characterized by prominent preliminary studies indicated the presence of boundary reflections (Jackson and Harris, a fan-delta system prograding from the north- 1981). Its inferred thickness, based on McGowen and Harris/Depositional Systems in the East Texas Basin 215 Table 1. Seismic reflectors and seismic units in the northwestern part of the East Texas Basin SEISMIC REFLECTOR SEISMIC UNIT Upper Navarro Marl Top of the Pecan Gap Chalk Top of the Austin Chalk Top of the Buda Limestone *Top of the Massive Anhydrite?- — — — > *Top of the Pettet Limestone ■ D —" *Top of the Gilmer Limestone — C | B *Top of the Louann Salt ______ ~" *Base of the Louann Salt A *Seismic reflectors used in this study. gravity data. Zones of thicker salt general- ly coincide with gravity lows, whereas areas of thinner salt correspond to gravity highs (Jackson and Harris, 1981) (Fig. 3). Isopach, net-sandstone, and sandstone- percent maps of the Cotton Valley Group and the Hosston Formation were prepared. The boundary between the two was based on scout card information and regional correlations within the East Texas Basin. Using the Pet- tet Limestone as a datum, nine stratigraphic cross sections were constructed within the study area; selected sections are included in this report (Fig. 2). Limitations of this data base include the following: First, although well spacing within individual oil and gas fields is good, overall spacing is poor, precluding detailed mapping of the Cotton Valley Group and Hos- ston Formation on a regional scale. Second, because conventional-core data were not available to verify environmental interpreta- tions, facies designations were based entire- ly on electric log response and on sand-body geometry determined from net-sandstone maps, sandstone-percent maps, and textural and com- Figure 1. Stratigraphic succession and no- positional features observed