STRATIGRAPHY AND RESERVOIR CHARACTERIZATION OF THE BLUE MONDAY SANDSTONE, CENTRAL WEST VIRGINIA

The Late Mississippian Blue Monday Sandstone (BMS) and correlative Webster Spring Sandstone is a stratigraphic unit that can only be found in the central gas fields of West Virginia. It is one of the most important unmapped stratigraphic layers in West Virginia. It lies between the Greenbrier Group (Big Lime) below, and the Reynolds Limestone (Little Lime) member of the Bluefield Formation, Mauch Chunk Group above. The BMS historically has produced gas in seventeen counties in central West Virginia. The BMS has been an important gas producing stratigraphic unit, yet very little is known about its geology. Counties in northern West Virginia produce from a BMS fluvial trend whereas counties in central West Virginia produce from a coastal/deltaic BMS trend. The confluence of these trends in Braxton, Clay and Nicholas counties provide information to more accurately delineate depositional trends. The total volume of gas produced from this unit is unknown because of commingled production; the volume from the Upper Mississippian strata in central West Virginia is suspected to be in the hundreds of billions of cubic feet.