MRCSP Phase I Geologic Characterization Report - Midwest ...

INTRODUCTION TO THE MRCSP REGION’S GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY
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Figure 4.—Generalized cross section across the Michigan and Appalachian basins. Profile line is shown on Figure
3. Elevations for geologic layers in this cross section obtained from maps produced for this report.
proximate boundary between the Kankakee arch and Illinois basin
in Indiana and the western flank of the Cincinnati arch in Kentucky
(Figure 3). The Illinois basin, the focus of another DOE-Carbon Sequestration
Partnership, was not included in this MRCSP study.
Michigan Basin
The Michigan basin is a nearly circular cratonic basin, occurring
mostly within the state of Michigan, but locally extending into
northern Indiana and northwestern Ohio. The basin is bordered on
the north and east by the Canadian shield, on the west by the Wisconsin
highland, on the southeast by the Findlay arch, and on the
southwest by the Kankakee arch (Figure 3). Interestingly, the basin
is situated above a gravity high, a feature that may represent complex
basement faulting or a failed rift zone at depth (Hinze and others,
1975). At the center of the Michigan basin, Precambrian basement
rocks are overlain by nearly 16,000 feet of sedimentary strata that
was deposited from Cambrian through Carboniferous time (Figure
5). Although there have been slight shifts in the depositional center
of the basin with time, the basin has remained essentially circular
throughout most of the Paleozoic.
Appalachian Basin
The northern Appalachian basin is an elongate, asymmetric
foreland basin with a preserved northeast-southwest trending central
axis that extends through Pennsylvania, western Maryland,
and West Virginia (Figure 3). The eastern margin of the basin is
concealed beneath thrust sheets in the Blue Ridge Province of the
Appalachian Mountains. The western margin of the basin occurs in
east-central Kentucky and central Ohio. The Cincinnati and Findlay
arches separate the Appalachian basin from the Illinois and Michigan
basins, respectively (Figure 3).
The Appalachian basin initially developed during the Cambrian
Period and above the Rome trough, a basement aulocogen formed
during Iapetan rifting (McGuire and Howell, 1963; Ammerman and
Keller, 1979; Shumaker, 1996). The Rome trough extends eastward
from Kentucky into West Virginia, thence northeastward, possibly
continuing beneath Ordovician and younger-age sediments of the
northern Appalachian basin. Following Iapetan rifting, the basin
was enlarged by periodically reactivation of geologic structures
that developed in response to collisional tectonics along the eastern
margin of North America during the Taconic (Upper Ordovician),
Acadian (Middle to Upper Devonian), and Alleghany (Upper Carboniferous)
orogenies of the Paleozoic Era (Tankard, 1986; Quinlan
and Beaumont, 1984; Thomas, 1995; Shumaker, 1996).
The Precambrian basement is overlain by more than 45,000 feet
of sedimentary rocks in the central Pennsylvania portion of the
northern part of the basin. Sedimentary rocks in the Appalachian
basin range Neoproterzoic to Carboniferous-Permian in age.
Structural Arches
Although the thickest sedimentary cover (and therefore greatest
potential for sequestration) are in the basins, portions of several of
the broad, structural arches in the MRCSP region also have potential
for sequestration of CO 2. The Findlay arch may have started as a
positive feature in the late Ordovician during the last phases of the
Taconic orogeny (Wickstrom and others, 1992). In northwestern
Ohio, the arch forms a broad, shallow platform where there has
been significant oil and gas production from the Ordovician Trenton
Limestone.
The Kankakee arch, a post early Ordovician feature, separates
the Michigan basin from the Illinois basin in northern Indiana. The
Indiana-Ohio platform is a broad relatively flat-lying area formed
where the Kankakee and Cincinnati arches merge. Several wastefluid
disposal wells have been drilled to the Mount Simon Sandstone
(a deep saline formation) along this trend in northeastern Indiana.
The Cincinnati arch is a late Ordovician positive feature that separates
the Illinois from the Appalachian basins in Kentucky, Indiana
and Ohio. The western boundary of the MRCSP region, in Kentucky
and Indiana, represents the approximate boundary between the Cincinnati
arch and Illinois basin. Unlike the previously discussed
arches, where Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks close to
the surface, the Cincinnati arch is underlain by the East Continent
rift basin, an elongate north-south trending basin filled with a thick
sequence of Proterozoic arenaceous rock (Shrake and others, 1991;
Drahovzal and others, 1992).