Gas storage in the Upper Devonian-Lower Mississippian Woodford Shale, Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma: how much of a role do the cherts play?

How gas is stored in shale-gas systems is a critical element in characterizing these potentially prolific, low-porosity/permeability reservoirs. An integrated mineralogic, geochemical, and porosity/permeability study is of the Upper Devonian-Lower Mississippian Woodford Shale, Arbuckle Mountains, southern Oklahoma, at locations previously described through detailed stratigraphic and spectral gamma surveys, was undertaken to provide insights into possible mechanisms by which natural gas might be stored in Woodford reservoirs in the adjacent Anadarko Basin. The outcrops in the Arbuckle Mountains are an ideal location to study the Woodford because here the formation is immature or marginally mature for oil generation (Comer and Hinch, 1987; Lewan, 1987), so deep burial and thermal maturation are much less pronounced than is the case for the Woodford in the basin, and as such the samples we studied are not overprinted by possible alterations resulting from deep burial and heating.