The Subsidence Evolution Of The Fort Worth Basin In North Central Texas, U.S.A.

Abstract

Although the Fort Worth Basin in north-central Texas has become a major shale-gas production system in recent years, its subsidence history and dynamic relationship to the Ouachita fold-and-thrust belt have not been well understood. Here I study the sedimentation patterns, model the basin subsidence and thermal maturation histories to understand the evolution of the Fort Worth Basin. Depositional patterns show that the tectonic loading of both the Muenster Arch and the Ouachita fold-and-thrust belt influenced the subsidence of the basin as early as the middle-late Mississippian. Rapid subsidence of the basin initiated in the earliest Pennsylvanian in response to the propagation of the Ouachita fold-and-thrust belt. The rapid subsidence lasted into the Permian based on 2D flexure subsidence and thermal maturation modeling. The Pennsylvanian source rocks in the northeast part of the basin entered the gas maturation window with ~6.5 km of burial during the late Pennsylvanian-Permian.