>>Dr. Elmore: At this stop we're still on
the south flank of the Arbuckle Anticline.
You can see the beds here dipping to the south.
At the last stop we were looking at limestones.
Here we have a different rock type. This is
a shale. It's called the "Woodford Shale",
and it's Devonian in age. Now if you look
at it, it looks dark. Dark shales often mean
they have a lot of organic matter in them.
And how can we test that? Well I can have
the students help me. If we grab a rock and
we break it, you can then smell it, and what
does it smell like?
>>Shannon: It smells like oil.
>>Dr. Elmore: Smells like oil and gas. It's
hydrocarbons, okay? The Woodford Shale is
probably the major, it is the major source
rock in Oklahoma. It provides the source of
most of the oil and gas that is found in Oklahoma.
Woodford shale is not only a source rock but
it's also a reservoir rock. Work in the last
10 to 15 years have exploited shales like
the Woodford Shales in Oklahoma, the Barnett
Shale down in North Texas. These are major
gas reservoirs, shale gas units. And we'll
be talking more about this in class.
