Emplacement and fill characteristics of carbonate mass failures across time, scale and depositional processes originating from the Central Basin Platform, Midland Basin, West Texas

Deep-water carbonate depositional systems produce deposits with significant variation in stratal architecture and facies distributions. These carbonate deposits play a huge role in the fill of numerous global basins, and form, in-part, via gravity flows such as carbonate mass failures (CMFs) and carbonate turbidites. Distinguishing the individual elements of mass-transport processes (i.e., debris flows, slide blocks, slumps, turbidites) has important implications for how we drill and explore in basins characterized by these process phenomena.

Carbonate mass failures form producing reservoirs in multiple hydrocarbon basins (e.g., Bone Springs Formation (Allen et al. 2013), & Amacker–Tippett Field (Van Der Loop 1990) Permian Basin; Ruby Field Indonesia (Tanos et al. 2023)). Rafted blocks, a component of mass transport deposits, are widely known to occur in CMFs (Van Der Loop 1990, Le Goff et al. 2020). Some evidence in literature suggests that carbonate blocks contain fractures with hydrocarbon production implications. Within the Permian Basin, the upper part of the Wolfcamp Formation is recognized as an interval containing mixed carbonate–siliciclastic fans (Kvale et al. 2019). These deposits have significant economic potential; an upper Wolfcamp A fan in the Delaware Basin produced ~20 million bbl oil and 47 BCF gas (Kvale 2017).

We use a modern 3D PSDM data set, along with numerous well penetrations, to describe the occurrence of carbonate mass failures and turbidite deposits in a mixed siliciclastic–carbonate system throughout the Upper Leonardian (Lower Permian) section of the western Midland Basin adjacent to the Central Basin Platform (CBP). We describe a large-scale Upper Leonardian CMF with a well-developed contractional toe (exceeding 20,000 acres in areal extent), carbonate debris aprons with enormous rafted blocks (up to 6500’L x 4200’W) in the Dean and Lower Wolfcamp intervals, and well-developed carbonate turbidite fans (up to ~14 mi W x ~5 mi L) in the Upper Wolfcamp.