ABSTRACT The Devonian Woodford Shale and Cretaceous Mowry Shale consist of relatively deep (below storm wave base) intracratonic basin deposits commonly referred to as “shales” because of their dark gray to nearly black color, very fine-grained nature, pelagic fossils such as radiolarians, and common amorphous marine kerogen. These shales typically contain less than 30% detrital clay by weight and more than 50% quartz (locally up to 80%). The quartz is a mix of biogenic grains, mainly radiolarians, and authigenic silica along with some detrital quartz silt of extrabasinal origin. The authigenic silica is dominantly microcrystalline (< 1 micron) and forms a major component of the matrix in these formations, but the rocks also contain authigenic pyrite, commonly as framboids, minor carbonates including magnesite, and quartz overgrowths, but together these authigenic minerals form less than 10% of the rock. Authigenic quartz in the Woodford and Mowry samples commonly takes the form of silica nanospheres, a type of microquartz less than a half micron in diameter. Textures of this microquartz are best observed directly with a high-resolution electron microscope. In many Woodford and Mowry samples, the silica nanospheres, which tend to be associated with organic matter, form more than 50% of the rock. The large volume of the authigenic quartz, together with “floating” detrital components and the close association with pyrite framboids, indicates that the silica nanospheres formed very early, perhaps in association with microbial activity on or in the seafloor sediments. These early silica nanospheres, which are only weakly luminescent, helped create a lithified sediment during or soon after deposition. Where the silicification process ceased prior to complete silica cementation, the early silica nanospheres are associated with up to 15% interparticle microporosity. This gives the Woodford and Mowry good potential reservoir quality, at least locally. The authigenic silica nanospheres also enhance the mechanical properties and brittleness of these siliceous mudrocks to a degree much greater than the presence of the detrital quartz particles alone.

Abstract Lower Permian (Wolfcampian) carbonate platform margin depositional profiles and stratigraphic architecture were controlled primarily by the type of reef community that characterized the time, peak icehouse glacioeustatic sea-level fluctuations, and regional tectonic pulses from the paleocontinental collision along the southern margin of the basin. During transgressions, mound-shaped reef cores began growth in sub-wavebase, low-light (oligophotic), upper slope settings. The reef mound communities quickly diversified, and the reef mounds aggraded and shallowed upward through the euphotic zone, eventually reaching wavebase during early highstand, and graded upward into progradational crestal shelf-margin shoals during late highstand. Reef mound growth seaward of and downdip from the crestal platform margin shoals resulted in distally-steepened platform margin profiles, which persisted throughout Permian time. Wolfcampian reef mound facies are composed of bafflestones-boundstones with frameworks of phylloid algae, calcisponges and heliosponges, and fenestrate and ramose bryozoans, which were encrusted by Tubiphytes, laminar encrusting red algae ( Archaeolithoporella ), fistuliporid bryozoans, and microbialite. Peloidal cement matrices are common. Syndepositional to early marine botryoidal radial fibrous cements are generally sparse but are more common in windward margin buildups. Reef mound cores are surrounded by shallowing-upward skeletal packstone to grainstone flank beds. Crestal shelf-margin shoals are composed of medium-to coarse-grained grainstones with fusulinids, Tubiphytes, and robust dasycladacean algae, and contain small Tubiphytes patch reefs. Early Permian icehouse glacioeustatic sea-level fluctuations and episodic tectonic pulses created erosional paleotopography on unconformities near the base of the Wolfcampian and at the mid-Wolfcampian. On the eastern margin of the Central Basin Platform, Lower Hueco Group (lower Wolfcampian) carbonate bank complexes composed of reef mounds and packstone-grainstone flank beds grew along an erosional escarpment on the underlying Bursum Formation (uppermost Pennsylvanian), as seen at South Cowden (8790 Canyon) Field, Ector County, Texas. The escarpment depositional slope was >10°. Reservoir porosity in the Lower Hueco platform margin carbonate banks was greatly enhanced by subaerial exposure and meteoric dissolution at the overlying mid-Wolfcampian unconformity. Lithoclastic-skeletal debris flows are common in Wolfcampian forebank, deeper water, slope-to-basin facies. Outcrop analogs for the subsurface carbonate platform margin banks and forebank slope-to-basin facies are well exposed in the Hueco Group of the western outliers of the Hueco Mountains in far west Texas, which were paleogeographically located along the western (leeward) margin of the Diablo Platform and adjacent Orogrande Basin. Platform margin banks prograded over an irregular paleotopographic surface on the sub-Hueco Group erosional unconformity. The leeward upper slope to shelf-margin reef mounds have phylloid algal-dominated core facies with only sparse radial fibrous cements, which graded rapidly upward near wavebase into crestal shelf-margin grainstone shoals with Tubiphytes patch reefs. Proximal forereef, upper slope facies are composed of autochthonous upper slope crinoidal-fusulinid packstones, burrowed dark mudstones, and productid brachiopod wackestones and have interbedded allochthonous tongues of forereef grainflows, turbidites, and lithoclastic-skeletal packstone debris flows. More distal slope-to-basin facies are composed of autochthonous dark cherty nonburrowed mudstones-wackestones with interbedded allochthonous lithoclastic-skeletal packstone debris flow deposits and turbidites. Slope facies distributions reflect icehouse glacioeustatic sea-level fluctuations.