Abstract
Reservoirs in the Trenton Limestone and the Black River Group (Limestone) both Upper Ordovician) in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio formed a major oil province that increased rapidly in importance beginning in 1884. This province became America’s first giant oilfield and has yielded more than 600 MBO, including that produced from the giant Albion-Scipio Trend (120 MBO), which was discovered in 1956. Trenton and Black River carbonates have always excited exploration interest, but very little was known about the nature and distribution of their reservoirs. Recent research on the nature of reservoir development in these units indicates that they do not contain any depositional porosity in the Great Lakes area. Reservoirs are found only where there has been dolomitization or fracturing or some combination of the two.
Dolomitization of Trenton and Black River limestones does not conform to facies-related models, such as the sabkha model, but must be related either to fluid movement along fractures associated with tectonic features or to burial dolomitization by some process that is not well understood. The importance of these two general types of dolomitization models can be shown by a comparison of fields where there has been dolomitization and fluid movement along a linear fault (or fracture) zone, and the Lima-Indiana Trend in Ohio and Indiana, where there has been a regional pattern of burial dolomitization. The range of oil recovery of the former is 12,000 to 2500 barrels per acre, and that of the latter is only 1,000 to 540 barrels per acre.
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Keith, B.D. Reservoirs resulting from facies-independent dolomitization: Case histories from the Trenton and Black River carbonate rocks of the Great Lakes area. Carbonates Evaporites 1, 74–82 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03174404
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03174404