Geology of

Petroleum

A. I. Levorsen
A Commemorative Edition

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 Geology of Petroleum

Second Edition
by A.I. Levorsen
Sections on hydrodynamic:- and capillary
pressure revised and edited by

Frederick A.F. Berry

This book originally was published by W.H.

Freeman and Company. This :-pecial edition i�

published by the American A�sociation of

Petroleum Geologi�t.., Foundation to honor the

memory of A.l. Levor�en.

Arville Irving Levorsen

Thi.1 SfWda/ reprim comme1110ratil'f.' edition

was made possible by nmtrihuriom· to rhe
AAPG Foundmicm from !he folloll'ing former
Sranford Unil•ersitY sntdent.l who benefited so
greatlvfmm A. I. Le1·orsen ·s inspirational
teaching:

Thoma� D. Barrow
Frederick A.F. Berry
R. Garvin Berry Jr.
Robert B. Fergu�on
Lawrence W. Funkhouser
Vern C. Jone�
John E. Lawton
Russell A. Pomeroy
Harry Ptusynski
Eugene F. '·Bud" Reid
L. Chase Rills Jr.
Robert A. Teitsworth
William J. and William B. Traver!>
Richard H. Vaughan
Edward B. Wasson

Copyright© 1954. 1967.2001. by

The AAPG Foundation. Tul�a. Oklahoma.
All Right� Reserved.
ISBK. O-R9181-S:2.J.-3

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 Memorial to Arville Irving Levorsen
By Wallace E. Pratt
Reprinted from AAPG Bulletin, volume 50
(1966), number 1 (January)
It is with a sense of inestimable privilege that
I speak on this occasion in acknowledgment of
the debt I know every member of this audience
feels all of us owe, and this Association owes, to
our cherished friend, Honorary Member, and for­
mer President-the late Arville Irving Levorsen.
I do not exaggerate when I assert that all around
the earth petroleum geologists held him in high­
est esteem. Among us who knew him personally,
a similar high esteem blended with our warm
affection.
W.H. Auden insists that among criteria of
worth in a man, "no documents, no statistics, no
objective measurements can ever compete with
the single intuitive glance." But where shall we
catch that "single intuitive glance"? Are his val­
ues to be discerned only in the personality of the
man himself? Or are they reflected also by the
fruits of his labors? I can not pretend to an inti­
mate acquaintance with A.I. Levorsen, the man. It
was "by his work" that I knew him. Can I, then,
have caught that "single intuitive glance" Auden
hails as all-revealing?
For many years Levorsen and I were friends.
Yet it was never my good fortune to be closely
associated with him. He was younger than I by
nearly a half-generation. Our respective centers of
professional interest were always almost half the
width of a continent apart, geographically.
Nevertheless, my awareness of him has long been
as vivid as his actual presence in the same room
could have made it.
T here is an old adage which declares that
every man writes his own epitaph. It is my thesis
that Levorsen literally did just that; that his pub­
lished writings, books, scientific papers-scores
of titles distributed through time across the entire
span of his professional career--constitute an epi­
taph as revealing as the composition of an inti­
mate friend could be. It is this record-
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Levorsen's epitaph of himself-that I propose
here briefly to explore.
I read in this epitaph a word-portrait of one
who, above all else, was a student, a life-long
student of the geology of petroleum. Yet imme­
diately, I am aware of something of an anomaly
in this student; it is that even as he himself
learned, he taught others. W hile still a student,
he was already a teacher. If we were to borrow a
simile from the lore of the oil-finder, we might
say that just as the favorable structural anomaly
which develops penecontemporaneously with
sedimentation often proves unusually productive
of hydrocarbons, so Levorsen, teaching
penecontemporaneously with his own learning,
later contributed in unusual measure to the art of
oil-finding.
In 1919, barely two years out of college,
Levorsen, at work in western Louisiana, encoun­
tered for the first time (and quite by accident) the
geology of the Tyler basin, situated just across the
state line in East Texas. Already aware of the con­
spicuous outcrops of Woodbine Sand, hundreds
of feet thick along the basin's western margin and
around its northern end, Levorsen was startled
when his party chief informed him that its eastern
margin, tilted gently westward off the Sabine
uplift, was totally devoid of Woodbine Sand!
This "single intuitive glance" at the Tyler
basin plunged Levorsen into a fever of specula­
tion. His imagination caught fire, not so much
from the Woodbine wedge-out, exciting though
that was, but from his realization of the control it
must exercise over fluid movement in the basin.
Levorsen did not stay in the South to participate
in the future development that he immediately
envisioned for the Tyler basin; he returned instead
to the Mid-Continent, where his professional
career already had begun to take root.
Nevertheless, his mental image of that updip
wedge-out of the Woodbine and its bearing on
possible accumulations of hydrocarbons persist­
ed. And he recalled it with undiminished clarity
when, a little more than 10 years later, a wildcat
well on a remote location in the Tyler basin-a
location selected, incidentally, with total disregard
of geologic consideration--discovered East
 Texas, the largest of North America's oil fields.
This early experience with the Tyler basin
provided Levorsen with standards and concepts
for his subsequent appraisals of sedimentary
basins as possible hosts to hydrocarbons over
most of the earth. Back in the Mid-Continent he
found it difficult to fall again into step in the
ranks of his profession. His fellow petroleum
geologists appeared to him unanimous in their
pursuit of a single narrow objective. They were
all engaged in a hectic search for anticlines. Local
structural deformation, expressed as an anticline
or dome, was to them the only effective agency
for trapping hydrocarbons. His own outlook grad­
ually came to encompass a far broader vision. His
mind filled with the vagaries of sediment deposi­
tion, of compaction, of diagenesis, and of stratifi­
cation of sediments. He thought of facies
changes, the gentle regional tilting of the strata of
a whole basin of deposition with subsequent trun­
cation following uplift, of reburial and resulting
unconformities. To him, all these had become
factors in trapping petroleum. And as his vision
expanded, his objectives grew larger: he would
discover not a single new oil field, but a whole
new category of oil fields, a succession of new
petroleum provinces!
This wider outlook on the problem of oil-find­
ing only developed through time. Levorsen's suc­
cessive publications document its progress. An
early paper, "Convergence Studies" ( 1927),
already reflects his interest in factors other than
anticlines or deformation of strata. His study,
"Greater Seminole District" (1929), based on his
earlier "Geology of Seminole County" (1928),
devotes only a single page to structure, but dis­
cusses stratigraphy for three pages. He concludes
in fact that, so far as the prolific pre-Pennsylvan­
ian reservoirs at Seminole are concerned, the geo­
logic structure is indeterminable. The flagrant tol­
erance by conservation authorities of "crooked
holes," which deviated as much as 45° from the
vertical, made well records worse than useless.
They showed differences as great as 600 feet in
the elevation of the same bed in offset wells on
10-acre locations.
"Studies in Paleogeology" (1933) testifies to
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Levorsen's early interest in a technique he has
labelled as "the keenest tool in the geologist's kit"
for dealing with what Philip King has described
as "the science of gently dipping strata."
Paleogeologic maps became Levorsen's most val­
ued approach to geologic problems.
In AAPG's "Problems of Petroleum Geology"
( 1934), a survey by Levorsen reveals that a
majority of all oil fields, and by far the bulk of all
oil produced in the Mid-Continent, are associated
with unconformities. This association he would
emphasize repeatedly in subsequent papers.
"Stratigraphic Versus Structural Accumu­
lations" (1936) introduces and defines the term
"stratigraphic trap," a concept Levorsen made
common currency, not only among geologists but
throughout the oil-producing industry.
Levorsen inspired, organized, and edited
"Stratigraphic Type Oil Fields" (1941 ), as a spe­
cial publication by AAPG. It reasserts and docu­
ments his insistence that our largest oil fields­
our giant oil fields--commonly are housed in
stratigraphic traps.
In 1953, driven by his instinct to share with
others what he had learned and thought about oil,
oil fields, and oil-finding, Levorsen published the
first edition of "Geology of Petroleum," his most
ambitious venture. It is a stimulating handbook
for the petroleum geologist, vibrant with the
author's zest to quicken the tempo of oil-field dis­
covery. In character, also, is the author's conclu­
sion that the most effective aid to exploration for
oil is a comprehensive understanding of the
detailed geologic history of the area under study:
its stratigraphy, sedimentation, deformation, and
especially its fluid phenomena.
The emphasis on fluid phenomena as a con­
trol of oil accumulation in sedimentary basins, a
control which Levorsen's earlier papers do not
stress, reveals the deep impression made on the
author by King Hubbert's analysis of theories of
groundwater movement published in 1940.
Hydrodynamics and its function in trapping oil
took on more and more significance to Levorsen,
until in a recent paper he ranked it equal in
stature with stratigraphy and structure as one of
three principal factors in 'The Geometry of the
 Oilfield Trap."
The slender volume, "Paleogeologic Maps"
(1960), written, as the author declares, after a
study that "has extended over 35 years," is per­
haps Levorsen's most finished and most scholarly
piece of research. Useful as paleogeologic maps
can be to the finder of oil, as Levorsen skillfully
demonstrates, they also can be made to serve
effectively in other, wider fields. With successive
paleogeologic maps, Levorsen modifies, convinc­
ingly and significantly, the generally accepted
configuration of "the continental backbone" of
North America.
Similarly, with a series of paleogeologic maps
of the Michigan basin and its environs, he shows
that basin to be less a true geosyncline than a
mere tectonic low or sag left undisturbed by dif­
ferential linear uplift along surrounding positive
axes.
The Paris basin, long believed by European
geologists to have persisted as a closed basin of
deposition since the early Mesozoic, is shown by
Levorsen's paleogeologic studies to have existed
as a separate basin only since the early Tertiary.
Previously, it had been part-a west-jutting
lobe--of the large West German basin ever since
late Paleozoic time.
Finally, Levorsen marshals persuasive evi­
dence, in the form of paleogeologic maps on the
same pre-Upper Carboniferous unconformable
surface in Brazil and South Africa, to show that at
the time this old surface was truncated, the
respective coast lines of these two areas could not
possibly have been so neatly fitted together as the
champions of the "Theory of Continental Drift"
would have us believe.
To Levorsen, a paleogeologic map portrayed a
buried, unconformable surface, just as an areal
geologic map portrays the present surface. He
coined apt phrases to make paleogeologic maps
come alive. They were "flash-backs" into geolog­
ic history, "phantom faces" of Mother earth, faces
that persisted only a moment in geologic time,
faces pieced together from "isolated glimpses" of
different segments commonly widely separated
from each other. Viewed from beneath the plane
of unconformity, the paleogeologic map also gave
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Levorsen "a worm's eye view" of the overlying
stratigraphic units and their contacts. Through his
device of paleogeologic maps, Levorsen visual­
ized "layers of geology" squeezed between
buried unconformable surfaces where "subtle
structure" trapped the oil of the Mid-Continent,
his best-beloved oil province.
Levorsen's genius for teaching enabled him
so to express his ideas on the occurrence of oil,
on the nature of oil fields, and on the art of oil­
finding as to make them intelligible to all men.
As a result, his presence as a speaker at their
annual conventions was sought just as eagerly by
the independent oil-producers as by his fellow
geologists.
In recent years, Levorsen had found occasion
more than once to protest vigorously a tendency
he had sensed for the seasoned and competent
geologist in the oil-producing industry to be
drawn farther and farther away from the rocks.
Ever more frequently he saw management select
its most able geologist for "promotion" to an
executive position. There, the ex-geologist would
administer corporate affairs, while the search for
new oil fields was left to a team of specialists.
Prestige and salary rise faster and farther for the
executive than for the geologist. Nevertheless,
Levorsen insisted if new oil fields are to be found,
there must be placed and maintained between the
executive and the technical specialists in explo­
ration, a trained, experienced geologist, intimately
familiar with the rocks themselves. And that geol­
ogist must have time, imagination, and perspec­
tive to create in the mind's eye, where every new
oil field is first discerned, the mental image which
will direct the specialists to their next discovery.
Such is the epitaph Arville Irving Levorsen
wrote for himself, asI read it. Epitaphs always
terminate, so far as my observation has gone,
with a conventional phrase. This phrase Levorsen
could hardly provide. I venture now to add it:
R.I.P.
May he rest in peace!
 FOR E WORD

A. I. L E V O R S E N died on July 1 6, 1 965. Shortly before his death he hatl

spent several days with his publisher considering editorial changes of his
manuscript for the second edition of Geology of Petroleum. Because he had
not been able to complete his work, I was asked by his family and by his
publisher to write a foreword, read proofs, and make an index. As A. I.
Levorsen's friend and former student, I was more than glad not only to
undertake these tasks but also to assume the role of editor of the new ma­
terial on hydrodynamics and capillary pressure. Having been asked earlier by
the author for my suggestions on the revision of this book, I felt a special obli­
gation to assist in whatever way I could in the publication of the second
edition.
Many important advances have been made in the geology of petroleum
since the first edition was published. The vigorous application of modern
concepts of physics and chemistry to geologic problems has led to the resolu­
tion of many of the problems related to the origin, migration, and accumula­
tion of petroleum-problems that were not well understood when the manu­
script for the first edition was completed in 1 95 3 .
The principal advances that have been made in the interval between edi­
tions are the result of detailed studies of the fluids found within rocks and of
the pore space in which these fluids are contained. As A. I. Levorsen pointed
out in the preface to the first edition, the geology of petroleum is essentially
the geology of fluids. And it is here that the real increases in understanding
have been made. The work of geologists and engineers, chemists and physi­
cists, has significantly increased our knowledge of the behavior of fluids within
various types of rocks. Practical investigations aimed at determining the flow
systems in various geologic provinces have enabled us to understand the
diverse origins of various fluid potentials and to predict the probable effects
of ,a given flow system upon the accumulation of petroleum. Today we have
a far better understanding of the relative transmissive properties of rocks and
of the geometry of fluid flow through various rocks under different hydro-

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 VI F O R E W O RD

dynamic conditions. Much, too has been learned about the origin of various
waters and their dissolved mineral content.
At the time the first edition was published, hydrologic investigations of the
deep sediments of geologic basins were just being initiated as a result of in­
vestigations that demonstrated conclusively that flowing water had a signifi­
cant effect on the accumulation of petroleum. The variety of ways in which
fluid potential gradients alter the geometry and the size of petroleum traps
has since come to be clearly understood. Similarly, the mechanics of petroleum
movement as a discrete phase within reservoir rocks (secondary migration)
under both hydrostatic and hydrodynamic conditions have now been described
quite thoroughly.
Important contributions to our knowledge of the organic geochemistry of
petroleum formation have been made since 1 954. Many of the problems re­
lated to the transformation of organic matter into petroleum have been re­
solved. Petroleum substances have been found in Recent sediments in both
marine and lacustrine environments, and petroleum has been discovered to
be accumulating on a modest scale within a sand lens in Recent sediments of
the Orinoco Delta, in eastern Venezuela. Chemical investigations of many
kinds have supplied much useful information. For example, knowledge gained
from isotopic analyses of the carbon atom, as well as studies of the distribu­
tion and behavioral differences between various hydrocarbon molecules, have
been particularly important.
Although many, if not most, of the important problems related to the mech­
anisms involved in the origin, migration, and accumulation of petroleum have
been resolved, no acceptable mechanism for primary migration has been pro­
posed. We still cannot explain how petroleum moves from the shales-the
source beds-into the sandstones, limestones, and other porous and permeable
rocks.
The major changes in this edition reflect the emphasis that has recently
been placed on applying the principles of hydrodynamics to the geology of
petroleum. Some parts of the first edition have been eliminated, numerous
new sections-both major and minor-have been added, and the chapter on
the origin of petroleum has been completely rewritten. The new material deals
primarily with the importance of flu id mechanics in the migration and ac­
cumulation of petroleum. Twenty-eight new illustrations have been prepared,
more than half of which relate to the influence of hydrodynamics upon pe­
troleum traps. The solid core of the first edition has been retained; the fea­
tures that made the first edition unique remain.
In my revision of the new material-particularly in the parts dealing with
the mechanics of fluids-1 have incorporated changes that, I feel, are of the
sort that the author would have made if he had lived. None of these changes,
however, alter the substance of what A. I. Levorsen wrote; this is his book
and his revision.
The first edition of this book was noted for its broad and thorough treat-

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 F OR E W O RD vii

ment of the many separate facets of geology and engineering that bear upon
the geology of petroleum, and for its extensive treatment of petroleum traps.
No other book has ever covered as thoroughly the various types and geome­
tries of traps. A. I. Levorsen was a man of great intellectual honesty and in­
tuition. Thus, he included in the first edition thorough reviews of subjects
that were applicable to the problems encountered in the geology of petroleum
even though the particular relevance of such subjects to these problems was
not then well understood. An example of this is his treatment of temperature
anomalies. The effect of temperature upon the physical propert:es of fluids has
long been obvious, but the importance of temperature anomalies to the dis­
cernment of fluid movement was not even the subject of speculation in 19 53.
Nonetheless, A. I. Levorsen included a careful treatment of the temperature
anomalies around various petroleum accumulations. Only recently have a few
workers begun to suspect that these anomalies probably represent various
fluid flow patterns.
A mark of good scholarship is that a man leaves firm blocks on which
others can build. Geology of Petroleum has been and remains the most out­
standing scholarly work of its kind. A mark of a good textbook and reference
work is the quality and quantity of new ideas that it stimulates the reader to
develop. The development of new ideas always interested A. I. Levorsen. No
serious student or professional geologist who reads this book can fail to de­
velop some fresh idea of his own. Despite my familiarity with the book since
its inception, my work on this second edition gave me a new-and seemingly
viable-idea.
Many of A. I. Levorsen's friends advised him on specific problems that
arose in the course of revision of this book. He would, of course, have ac­
knowledged each of them individually had he lived to write a preface for the
second edition. I know only that he would have liked to thank Sherman A.
Wengerd of the University of New Mexico, who contributed many particu­
larly helpful suggestions, and Louis Renne, who prepared the twenty-eight
new illustrations. As for the many other individuals who helped him in various
ways, all I can do is acknowledge them collectively and extend Mr. Levorsen's
thanks for their generous help.
My personal thanks go to Roger L. Hoeger, who read critically the new
material on hydrodynamics; to John M. Hunt for reviewing Chapter 1 1 , Ori­
gin of Petroleum; to Jon Galehouse, who prepared the index for this edition;
and to Richard L. Beasley and Mary Grauberger for their help in checking
the bibliographies and the cross references.

FREDERICK A. F. BERRY

Berkeley, California
October 191)6

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 PR E FAC E TO TH E

FIRST E D ITION

THIS B OOK is intended primarily for students who have had the basic
courses in geology, and also for petroleum geologists who are actively explor­
ing for oil and gas pools. Geology enters into many of the problems of the
geophysicist, the reservoir and production engineer, and the wildcatter, and
it is hoped there is also something of interest here for each of these. The order
of presentation is what to me seems most logical: first, and of most impor­
tance, the reservoir, with particular emphasis on the trap; next the reservoir
conditions of temperature and pressure and the different reservoir fluids; then
the speculative ideas on origin, migration, and accumulation; and finally some
of the ways of applying what has been considered in the search for new pools
and provinces. In the search for new pools, we must remember, most of the
ideas that concern the geology of petroleum are translated sooner or later
into economic values, for they enter into one's judgment on many questions
in exploration, such as whether to lease, to drill, to test, or to abandon. The
book therefore includes some of the practical applications, along with the
theoretical analyses, of the geological elements involved in petroleum ex­
ploration.
The work and the interest of the petroleum geologist have gradually ex­
panded. Less than fifty years ago he merely mapped the geologic structure
at the surface of the ground. Now he is concerned with all phases of explora­
tion, from his first faint suspicion of the presence of a trap, through the
drilling of the discovery well, to the final development of the pool. We are
learning that the geology of petroleum is essentially the geology of fluids.
Geologic concepts enter into each phase of the operation-more during the
prospecting, it is true, than during the development; but even in the later
period many operators continue to use geologic concepts until the pool is
completely developed-some, indeed, into the period of secondary recovery.
The modern petroleum geologist must know something, therefore, about the
reservoir fluids, the forces involved, and the manner in which petroleum is
developed and produced. In the engineering phases of exploration, as in

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 P R E F A C E TO T H E F I RST E D I T I O N ix

reservoir and production mechanics, new data requiring quantitative study

are being uncovered,. and many new concepts of the interrelations between
the rocks and their fluids are forming. From these the geologist is learning
much about how petroleum acts under varying underground conditions, and
he is thereby better able to search for it.
Several books would be necessary if I were to cover completely the dif­
ferent fields of activity now assigned to the petroleum geologist. In attempt­
ing to present the most important topics in a single volume, I have given first
attention to what, in my opinion, aids most in the discovery of new oil and
gas pools or in the extension of old ones : an understanding of the geologic
history of an area-its stratigraphy, its sedimentation, its deformation, and
especially its fluid phenomena; for it is from a wide knowledge of many prin­
ciples concerning underground conditions that predictions that lead to dis­
covery may best be made.
Two important procedures that are particularly adapted to petroleum ex­
ploration-electrical logging and geophysical surveying-are merely touched
on, and their principles are discussed only enough to give the reader wholly
unfamiliar with them some knowledge of their technology and application.
The reason for this seeming slight is that both procedures involve complex
technology, and a reasonably complete discussion of them would require
much more space than can be allotted. Both have been adequately treated
in a number of books and articles. To a lesser degree, other topics that are
of great importance to the petroleum geologist have also been passed by­
for example, aerial surveying and mapping, laboratory techniques of sample
and core analysis, principles of sedimentation and paleontology, and plane­
table mapping. All require geological interpretation to be of use in petroleum
exploration, and the emphasis in this book is on what to do with geological
data after they are available, by whatever means they are obtained. The
techniques used now in obtaining the necessary data will be supplanted­
some probably even before the book is printed-by new techniques, but the
principles utilizing the data should remain valid for a long time. The chief
purpose of this book, then, is to discuss and analyze the principles that are
employed in the discovery process rather than to describe oil pools or tech­
niques of obtaining the data that may be used.
Probably some explanation should be made of the large number of refer­
ences that are cited. They are intended to give credit to authors and publica­
tions for the ideas expressed, to be sure, but they are primarily intended to be
used as a guide to study for expanding one's knowledge of the subject being
considered. For that reason I have generally referred to at least one of the
recent articles dealing with the subject-if possible, to a recent article con­
taining a bibliography or a longer-than-usual list of references. The predomi­
nance of articles on the geology of petroleum in American geologic literature
explains .the larger number of American references used, most of which are
available in college and oil-field area libraries. The specific references and

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 X PR E F A C E TO T H E F I RST E D I T I O N

also the general references a t the end of each chapter may therefore be used
as sources for seminar and special subject studies, and it is hoped that in this
they will prove useful.
The maps and sections have nearly all been redrawn, with many inessen­
tial details omitted, and were selected to illustrate the principles discussed;
they are not to be taken as descriptions of oil pools. There is no point in
cataloguing producing pools except as they illustrate specific principles that
apply to exploration, for our first interest is in finding new producing areas.
Many people have assisted me in preparing this book, and to each I am
most grateful. Especial thanks go to Frederick A. F. Berry, who critically
read the manuscript and made many useful suggestions. Gilman A. Hill,
William J. McPherson, Walter Rose, and Lyndon L. Foley also read parts
of the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. The figures were drafted by
William A. Adent, 0. T. Hayward, Jack Redmond, Clifford Bird, and Louis
Renne. Most of the manuscript was typed by Bette Cornett Binford, Doris
Slogar, Genevieve Scott, Jean Freeman, and Cleta Walker.

A. I. LEVORSEN
Tulsa, Oklahoma
March 1, 1954

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 CON T E N TS

P A R T ONE: I N T R O D U CTION 1

1 Introduction and Summary 3

2 The Occurrence of Petroleum 14

P A R T TWO: T H E R E S E R V O I R 47

3 The Reservoir Rock 52

4 The Reservoir Pore Space 97
5 Reservoir Fluids-Water, Oil, Gas 1 44
6 Reservoir Traps-General and Structural 232
7 Reservoir Traps (continued)-Stratigraphic and Fluid 286
8 Reservoir Traps (continued)-Combination and Salt Domes 349

P A R T T H R E E : RESER V O I R DYNA M I C S 385

9 Reservoir Conditions-Pressure and Temperature 3 89

10 Reservoir Mechanics 433

P A R T FOUR: T H E G E O L O G I C H I S T O R Y
O F PETR O L EUM 495

11 The Origin of Petroleum 499

12 Migration and Accumulation of Petroleum

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 P ART F IV E: A P P L ICATI O N S 585

13 Subsurface Geology 588

14 The Petroleum Province 627
15 The Petroleum Prospect 658

A P P E ND IX 674

Glossary 674
Abbreviations 680
List of Bibliographies 684
Tables 685

INDEX 690

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