ITS Sponsored Research Projects

Outcrop analog studies of salt diapirs and surrounding strata still provide the most reliable dataset for visualization of salt-sediment geometries and for developing salt-related play concepts and reservoir scale geologic models. La Popa salt basin of northeastern Mexico, the Willouran and Flinders Ranges of South Australia, and the Paradox basin of Utah contain exceptional exposures of a variety of types of salt diapirs, salt welds, and minibasins where the scale and geometry of structural and stratigraphic features created by salt-sediment interaction can be examined in both plan view and cross section. The salt bodies and salt-related structures of these basins are important because high-quality, accessible exposures of salt-influenced basins are uncommon in the world, yet provide the only “ground truth” data, which can be used to define and calibrate the quality, geometry, and continuity of salt-related hydrocarbon traps.

La Popa Basin Field Analog

Near Monterrey, Nuveo Leon, Mexico

Project Leaders:
Katherine A. Giles
Timothy F. Lawton

La Popa basin lies within the distal part of the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene Hidalgoan Laramide foreland system that includes the Parras basin and the adjacent Sierra Madre Oriental fold and thrust belt to the south. The boundaries of La Popa basin are topographic, defined by ranges that consist of anticlines (i.e., Sierra de la Gavia, Sierra del Fraile, and Sierra de Minas Viejas; Laudon, 1975) whose structural development culminated late in the history of the basin and separated it from the Parras and Sabinas basins (Soegaard et al., 1997; Ye, 1997). La Popa basin lies adjacent to the northeastern flank of the Coahuila block, a Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous basement uplift that became the locus of thick accumulations of platform carbonates during the Early Cretaceous (McKee et al., 1984; Wilson and Ward, 1993). Mesozoic through Paleogene strata in La Popa basin are deformed by northwest-southeast trending folds of the Coahuila marginal fold belt (Wall et al., 1961).

Three exceptionally exposed salt stocks within La Popa basin (El Papalote, El Gordo, and La Popa) and a 25 km long, arcuate, vertical salt weld (La Popa weld) have been the focus of past research (Giles and Lawton, 1999, 2002; Rowan et al., 2003). The diapirs are roughly elliptical in plan view and have a surface area of 4-6 km. The diapirs comprise a gypsum caprock containing entrained blocks of meta-igneous rocks and Jurassic carbonate (Laudon, 1984, 1996; Garrison and McMillan, 1997). The entrained blocks are thought to be derived from beds that were intercalated with the evaporite during deposition in an extensional Jurassic basin and carried along with the diapiric evaporite. Halite casts and a nearby well prove the existence of salt at depth. The diapiric evaporite was derived from Minas Viejas and/or Olvido evaporite horizons, both of Late Jurassic age. Diapiric evaporite exposures are surrounded by halokinetic growth strata of all ages exposed in the basin.

Willouran and Flinders Ranges Field Analog

Near Marree and Blinman, South Australia, Australia

kernen Project Leaders:
Katherine A. Giles
Mark G. Rowan

The Willouran and Flinders Ranges contain exposed strata of Precambrian through Cambrian age referred to as the Adelaide fold belt (Jenkins, 1990; Marshak and Flöttmann, 1996). The Adelaide fold belt is currently thought to have initiated as a deeply subsiding basin in a rift or aulocogen tectonic setting (Sprigg, 1952; Scheibner, 1973; von der Borch, 1980; Preiss, 1983). It was subsequently deformed during the Late Cambrian-Ordovician Delamerian orogeny. The basin accumulated a very thick succession (as much as 20,000m) of marine to non-marine strata during the Neoproterozoic and Early Cambrian. The Willouran Callana Group includes a mixed assemblage of evaporites (non-marine), red beds, marginal marine carbonates and clastics, and alkaline volcanics (Rowlands et al., 1980). These depositionally intercalated lithologies of the Callana Group are present as entrained clast lithologies in breccias that delineate more than 40 diapirs in the Adelaide Foldbelt. These diapirs started growing immediately after evaporite deposition (e.g., Dyson, 2004; Hearon, 2008; Hannah, 2009) and persisted throughout the time recorded by the exposed strata. Diapirism was passive, as indicated by clasts of Callana Group lithologies found in debris flows that define halokinetic sequence boundaries throughout the Adelaide Fold Belt succession (a similar clast relationship is present in the diapirs and halokinetic sequences in La Popa basin, Mexico). Allochthonous salt was extruded at two different times during the basin history (Dyson, 2004, 2005; Rowan and Vendeville, 2006), forming salt sheets and multi-level canopies that are partly welded (Hearon, 2008; Hannah, 2009). Both primary diapirs and allochthonous canopies strongly influenced the geometries of structures formed during the Delamerian Orogeny (Rowan and Vendeville, 2006).

Paradox Basin Field Analog

Castle Valley, Near Moab, Utah

Castle Valley

 

Project Leaders:
Katherine A. Giles
Timothy F. Lawton

The asymmetric Paradox basin of eastern Utah and western Colorado developed in middle Pennsylvanian time adjacent to the NW-trending basement-cored Uncompahgre uplift (Baker et al., 1933; Wengerd and Strickland, 1954; Elston et al., 1962). The Paradox Formation, a thick succession of cyclic Pennsylvanian shale, dolostone, halite and potassium salt minerals, defines the limits of the basin (Peterson and Hite, 1969; Hite et al., 1972; Condon, 1997). The Paradox Formation is overlain by Pennsylvanian and Permian siliciclastic strata that decrease in grain size and change facies to the southwest, creating a complex mosaic of facies and resulting complex stratigraphic nomenclature (Baars, 1961; Condon, 1997). Salt diapirism in the form of elongate salt walls took place during Pennsylvanian-Jurassic time, as indicated by thickening of strata into elongate minibasins between the salt walls (Shoemaker et al., 1958, Doelling, 1988; Trudgill et al., 2004).
Photos
Implications of diapir-derived detritus and gypsic paleosols in Lower Triassic strata near the Castle Valley salt wall, Paradox Basin, Utah- (Lawton & Buck, 2006) GSA pdf

GSA Poster (.pdf)
Foster, Lawton and Buck, (2006)

Poster Abstract (pdf)