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In Hilight field more than 74 million bbl of oil and 244 bcf of gas have been produced from thin fluvial and shallow marine sandstones of the Lower Cretaceous Muddy Sandstone. In this area the Muddy was deposited during a late Albian sea level rise and onlaps a lowstand subaerial surface of erosion including a dendritic valley system incised into the underlying Skull Creek Shale. Transgressive valley-fill deposits of the Muddy Sandstone in the Hilight field area consist of four regionally correlative, time-bounded, back-stepping, progradational units. The retrogradational nature of these units indicates they belong in a transgressive systems tract rather than a lowstand wedge, as is often implied for valley-fill sequences. Each unit is capped by a regionally extensive marine flooding surface. The contact between units is placed at the surface representing maximum flooding or at the correlative horizon landward of the maximum transgression. Two of these contacts include thin bentonite beds which substantiate the time-stratigraphic interpretation. Petroleum is trapped in each unit by the onlap of reservoir sandstone facies against the lowstand surface of erosion on the impermeable Skull Creek Shale. Top seals are formed by mudstones at the base of overlying units or by the Shell Creekmore » Shale, which overlies the Muddy Sandstone above a regionally extensive marine flooding surface. Reservoir heterogeneity is explained by lateral facies changes within each unit. The lateral and vertical distribution of reservoir-quality sandstone in the Muddy sequence in this area can be used as a model to predict occurrences in similar sequences elsewhere.« less |
