STARR Hosts Core Workshop on Southern Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin

On October 24, the State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery (STARR) program hosted a core workshop, “Shelf-to-Basin Architecture, Depositional Systems, and Facies Variability of the Southern Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin.” The well-attended event, sponsored by the Austin Geological Society, offered an in-depth overview of shelf, shelf-edge, and slope- depositional-facies characteristics; stratigraphic variations; and sedimentation trends of the Missourian Canyon Group and Virgilian–Wolfcampian Cisco Group across the southern Eastern Shelf and the adjacent Midland Basin. In morning sessions, attendees saw presentations of the regional studies; in the afternoon, they examined key cores with a detailed review of depositional environments from source to sink, including fluvial incised valley fill, shelf, shelf edge, slope, and slope-to-basin-floor transition. Bureau presenters were Tucker F. Hentz, William A. Ambrose, Robert W. Baumgardner, and Fritz Palacios.

While regional depositional features of equivalent strata of the northern half of the Eastern Shelf are well documented in the works of Frank Brown and others, the facies architecture of the southern half of this major petroleum province previously had been only incompletely examined. The study of the southern Eastern Shelf—based on detailed analysis of more than 2,200 well logs and approximately 10 cores within a 19-county area of West Texas—is well documented in recent work by Bureau researchers Hentz, Ambrose, and Scott Hamlin, and published in Report of Investigations 282. The region is currently the site of both conventional and unconventional exploration and production.

The STARR program conducts geologic research that increases the production and profitability of oil and gas in the State of Texas. Results of STARR regional studies are used by oil companies as the basic framework for their exploration efforts. Core workshops such as this one are a key component in the technology transfer process. To learn more about STARR and future workshops, please contact William Ambrose.