The geologic setting of southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, with a rationale for assessment of undiscovered economically recoverable oil and gas; a summary of four potential plays

Mineral resource potential and geology of Coronado National Forest, southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico

“…1) may be analogous to the West Texas Permian basin. The Pedregosa Basin and south-central Cochise County plays of Butler (1989) are conventional-trap plays. The structural and stratigraphic traps of the well-established West Texas Permian basins to the east were prolific oil producers; therefore, the \ southward-and westward-thickening deposits of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona are considered promising plays, provided that the geologic setting in these areas is similar to that of West Texas.…”

“…In addition, thickness of Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks in Arizona and New Mexico may have been measured inconsistently between studied sections because a major lithologic boundary in rocks near the Pennsylvanian-Permian boundary is time transgressive. Regardless of whether these key rocks are in a basin or are simply part of a southwestward-thickening shelf sequence, the potential for conventional structural traps exists because source and reservoir rocks are present and their geothermal maturity is appropriate for petroleum formation (Butler, 1989;Wardlaw and Harris, 1984). Young igneous intrusive rocks are not believed to have been sufficiently voluminous to have driven off oil and gas in most of southwestern New Mexico (Thompson, 1976); conditions in southeasternmost Arizona are similar.…”