INTEGRATED GEOPHYSICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FORTH WORTH BASIN, OUACHITA OROGENIC BELT, NORTH TEXAS

The Fort Worth Basin is one of the most productive basins in the United States given its rich and continuously producing hydrocarbon/shale gas reserves. Central to its reputation is the Mississippian-Barnett shale formation, a notable source rock produced from Paleozoic reservoir rocks in the Bend-Arch- Fort Worth Basin region. This basin is located just west of the Ouachita Orogenic Belt (OOB). Hence, a better geological and geophysical understanding of the area is important to both the oil and gas industry advancing our knowledge of the structure and the evolution of the OOB. The primary objective of this research is to provide a robust interpretative discussion on the geological features observed on the processed elevation, gravity, and magnetic maps and to construct a 2-D model of the gravity profile line across the basin and the OOB. In this work, we also present an integrated analysis of the regional gravity anomalies, the structure of the crustal and basement rocks and how they are linked to the Paleozoic sequences above. The constraints from drilling data require that the deep upper crustal structure vary significantly under the axis of the Forth Worth basin. The geological and geophysical interpretations of these mapping and profile modeling efforts were greatly aided by recent research results from our group and other researchers.