Deep-Water Carbonates: Buildups, Turbidites, Debris Flows and Chalks—A Core Workshop

Deep-water carbonates represent on the few frontiers remaining for carbonate exploration and research. The last decade has experienced a rapid evolution in concepts of depositional models and diagenesis which underscores the importance of these deposits as significant reservoirs and source rocks. This workshop displayed cores selected to provide subsurface geologic examples of deepwater carbonates from a variety of depositional settings. Several papers discuss depositional models, platform-to-basin reconstructions, and diagenetic sequences that are important in the development and exploration of Paleozoic carbonate debris flow and turbidite reservoirs of the Palo Duro, Delaware and Midland Basins. Many other examples are included from several different regions.
Allochthonous Carbonates of the Getaway Limestone, Upper Permian of the Delaware Basin Available to Purchase
-
Published:January 01, 1985
Abstract
Conventional cores from a well about 4-5 km southwest of the El Capitan peak of the Guadalupe Mountains contain a variety of alloch-thonous carbonates interbedded with siliciclastics. These samples of the Getaway tongue of the Cherry Canyon Formation contain lithoclasts, skeletal sands, and whole shallow water fossils in a variable matrix of lime mudstone, siltstone, and sandstone. These components are mixed in varying proportions to yield floatstones, rudstones, grainstones, and packstones. The depositional environment for these lithologies is interpreted based on their geometries in the field and petrographic features to be channelized debris flow and other gravity flow carbonates. The sediments were derived from and behind a shelf edge, which was situated approximately 10 km to the west of the well site, and accumulated on a gently sloping basin margin. The allochthonous basinal carbonates studied in core occur in a distal position relative to toe-of-slope deposits that outcrop in the Guadalupe Mountains. Core examples contain thinner and finer grained limestone debris beds versus thick bedded, extremely coarse debris dolomites in outcrop.