General Setting
Information Search and Selection

Com ments

on

Geo logic

Para meters

1 Depth:

2 Permeability/Hydraulic Conductivity:

3 Formation Thickness:
4 Net Sand Thickness:
5 Percent Shale:
6 Continuity:
7 Top Seal Thickness:
8 Continuity of top seal:
9 Hydrocarbon Production:
10 Fluid Residence Time:
11 Flow Direction Elevation:

12

CO2 Solu bility Brine

 12a Temperature:
12b Pressure:
12c Salinity:
13 Rock/Water Reaction:
14 Porosity:
15 Water Chemistry:
16 Rock Mineralogy:

Pottsville Formation, Black Warrior Basin, Alabama/Mississippi

Comments on Geologic Parameters

6 Continuity:

The Lower Pottsville strata (800 to 1,000 ft thick) contain orthoquartzitic sandstone, shale, and coal interpreted as the deposits of barrier-bar, tidal-flat, and lagoonal sediments in a north-northeast progradational system of a massive clastic wedge shed from the Ouachita orogen (Cleaves and Broussard, 1980). The Upper Pottsville consists of lithoarenite, shale, coal, and minor amounts of orthoquartzite and represents a lateral gradation from lower delta-plain distributary channels, to interdistributary bays, to a barrier bar. The Lower and the Upper Pottsville sediments were deposited in two different delta systems (Horsey, 1981). The Pottsville in the north is exposed and has been eroded as a result of upwarping of the Nashville Dome. Approximately 35 separate coal beds occur in the Pottsville Formation; most are fairly local seams, but few are extensive and have been used to define seven coal groups in the Upper Pottsville. Several authors have stratigraphically divided the Pottsville; however, because of limited information, we have characterized the whole interval.

6 Map:

6 Reference:

Cleaves, A., and Broussard, M., 1980, Chester and Pottsville depositional systems, outcrops and subsurface, in the Black Warrior Basin: Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions, v. 30, p. 49–59