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Fracture and fault patterns associated with basement-cored anticlines: The example of Teapot Dome, Wyoming

¹ Geophysical Technology Department, Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800 MS 0750, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185; spcoope{at}sandia.gov
² Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1215 W. Dayton St., Madison, Wisconsin 53706; laurel{at}geology.wisc.edu
³ Geophysical Technology Department, Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800 MS 0750, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185; jcloren{at}sandia.gov

Scott Cooper is a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He received his B.S. degree from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (1997) and his M.S. degree in geology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (2000). His current research focuses on natural fracture systems, CO₂ sequestration, and reservoir characterization.

Laurel B. Goodwin received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, studying the spatial and temporal evolution of high-strain zones in the middle crust. Subsequent postdoctoral research at the Arizona State University and the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton focused on observations at very different scales, from nanometers to tens of kilometers. In 1992, she joined the faculty at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where she began applying these different approaches to understanding the deformation of granular porous media in the shallow crust. This field-based work has focused on characterizing the mechanical, structural, and hydraulic evolution of fractured and faulted porous media to better constrain fluid-fracture and fluid-fault interactions. As with previous studies, this research requires consideration of the spatial and temporal development of zones of localized deformation. She has been a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2004.

John Lorenz has worked on the characterization of reservoirs (sedimentology and natural fractures) since joining the Sandia National Laboratories in 1981. He attended Oberlin College, the University of South Carolina, and Princeton University. He is a former elected editor of AAPG.

Teapot Dome is an asymmetric, doubly plunging, basement-cored, Laramide-age anticline. Most of the fractures, deformation bands, and faults at Teapot Dome are interpreted to have formed during contemporaneous longitudinal and transverse stretching of the sedimentary cover over a basement-involved thrust. Strain was accommodated by fractures, deformation bands, and normal and normal-oblique faults that strike both parallel and perpendicular to the fold hinge. The fracture and fault patterns at Teapot Dome are distinctly different from those formed within anticlines associated with thin-skinned thrust systems. The inferred fracture-influenced permeability anisotropy of thick-skinned systems is therefore distinct from that of thin-skinned systems. We propose that Teapot Dome is a good analog for similar basement-involved, thrust-generated anticlines.