Upper Permian Capitan Reef
A depositional and diagentic model for the Capitan reef complex (Late Permian, Guadalupian age) has evolved during more than 50 years of outcrop studies in the Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas and New Mexico. The model relates the shelf margin (Capitain Limestone) with equivalent shelf (in ascending order, Seven Rivers, Yates, and Tansill Formations) and basin (Bell Canyon Formation) strata. It has proved to be important in relating hydrocarbon distribution in shelf and basin strata in the Permian basin and has been important as an analog in numerous other basins. Detailed study of the northern rim of the Delaware basin, centering on a 4,800-ft core, has caused us to reevaluate the outcrop-defined depositional model for the Capitan shelf margin along the following themes. Geologic evolution. Progradation of the margin was not uniform throughout deposition of the Capitan as is portrayed in most reconstructions. Outcrop mapping and log correlations, in fact, show that 75% of the total basinward progradation of the Capitan occurred during deposition of the Seven Rivers Formation. This maximum progradation corresponds to back-reef carbonates largely devoid of siliciclastics, thick carbonate debris beds on the slope and basin edge, and thick siliclastics deposited in the basin. Depositional facies and diagenesis. The pisolithic shoal complex, the predominant feature marking the highest part of the shelf margin, was more laterally extensive than known from outcrop.
- OSTI ID:
- 6469417
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-880301-
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Houston, TX, USA, 20 Mar 1988
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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03 NATURAL GAS
NATURAL GAS DEPOSITS
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
PETROLEUM DEPOSITS
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DATA ANALYSIS
DEPOSITION
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