24 The Value of Core and Cuttings in Obtaining Information on Basement Rocks of the Midcontinent

Tuesday, 11 March 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
101

OKLAHOMA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY GEOLOGICAL CORE SCIENCE & SUPPORT

Paper number: 24-1
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 1:30 PM – 1:50 PM

Authors

Abstract

The Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) aims to provide a resource for core and cutting sciences for Oklahoma and the surrounding region, including facilitating projects of national and international importance. Recent donations from Baker-Hughes of two CT-scanners (one custom whole-core, and one a high-res), and a RefTek mutli-logger (photography, XRF, Gamma) add to our facilities which include the electron microprobe facility and a growing optical microscopy lab, which will include thermal maturity measurement capabilities. OPIC, the Oklahoma Petroleum Information Center, houses core, cuttings, logging data, and a variety of other collection types, in a warehouse with a footprint of approximately four football fields. A burgeoning effort to host at least the metadata, and some raw data, online in a freely accessible form has led to our initial well viewer, which provides a map-based GUI to explore the collections. Recent projects with the Department of Energy and the USGS have opened up new pathways for developing our facilities. Key efforts include Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Hydrogen energy efforts, wherein OGS can provide core-handling technical support along with our other institutional strengths such as induced-seismicity monitoring. Another effort surrounds critical mineral (CM) research wherein legacy cores and thin-section collections can be integrated with ongoing oil-field data (e.g. produced waters) and surface mapping of mineral resources. In each of these cases the science of the Mid-Continent Rift and Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen literally and figuratively underly many of the current geoscience challenges. Yet, our resolution on each of these basement features is poor with sparse public geophysical constraints and even sparser sampling. Through a renewed effort to inventory the existing collections, and target new project-oriented coring, it is an excellent time to look deeply at the regional basement.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 1

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025SC-407793

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