AAPG Bulletin, v. 86, no. 8 (August 2002), pp.

13671381 1367
Anatomy of a normal fault
with shale smear: Implications
for fault seal
Atilla Aydin and Yehuda Eyal
ABSTRACT
We describe the geometry and structural attributes of an excep-
tionally well-exposed normal fault with shale smear in southern
Israel. We discuss the mechanism by which the shale was emplaced
into the fault zone and compare and contrast it with other shale
emplacement mechanisms. The shaly unit, the Ora formation, is
about 110 m thick in normal stratigraphic position and is composed
of a lower shale member of approximately 60 m and an upper shale
member of approximately 30 m, separated by a middle carbonate-
bearing unit approximately 20 m thick. One or both of these shale
units occur along the entire 2 km length of the fault, although with
a drastically reduced thickness. The upper shale member vanishes
along a large part of the fault, but the lower shale appears to survive
in the fault rock with less than 0.5 m thickness. Both shale units
have been stretched for more than 250 m(the fault throw) between
nearly planar discontinuities dened by the footwall or hanging-wall
cutoff planes (duplex). Thus, the fault geometry, position, and dis-
tribution of the remaining shale rocks reveal a smearing process by
which the shale units reduce their thickness or vanish by thinning
perpendicular to the fault and stretching parallel to the fault. The
continuity of the lower shale unit as a fault rock appears to be barely
maintained for a throw/thickness ratio of approximately 4 but not
for the upper shale unit, which has a throw/thickness ratio of ap-
proximately 8. The brittle carbonate-bearing rocks within the shaly
rocks are fractured and faulted and show boudinage at various
scales, which result in signicant variation in the lithological and
mechanical character of the fault zone along the throwinterval. The
faults and joints, however, do not appear to degrade the integrity
of the smeared shale as a lateral barrier along the fault zone.
I NTRODUCTI ON
Many societal issues in the earth sciences are closely related to
the ow of water, natural gas, oil, and chemical and radioactive
Copyright 2002. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
Manuscript received September 18, 2000; revised manuscript received January 11, 2002; nal acceptance
February 1, 2002.
AUTHORS
Atilla Aydin Shale Smear Project,
Department of Geological and Environmental
Sciences, Stanford University, California;
aydin@pangea.stanford.edu
Atilla Aydin received his B.S. degree in
geological engineering from Istanbul Technical
University (Turkey) and his M.S. degree and
Ph.D. in geology from Stanford University.
After three years of teaching at Istanbul
Technical University and ten years of teaching
at Purdue University, he moved to Stanford
University in 1991 as a research professor of
structural geology and geomechanics. He is
codirector of the Rock Fracture Project and
director of the Shale Smear Project at
Stanford. His research interest includes how
rocks break and uids ow through fractures
and faults with a primary application to
hydrocarbon entrapment, migration, and
recovery.
Yehuda Eyal Department of Geology and
Mineralogy, Ben Gurion University, Beer
Sheva, Israel
Yehuda Eyal is currently a professor of
structural geology in the Department of
Geological and Environmental Sciences at the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He
received his B.S. degree (1965), M.S. degree
(1967), and Ph.D. (1976) from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Israel. His current
research interests are focused on
development of the Syrian Arc and the
relationships between the Syrian Arc and the
Dead Sea stress elds in the Middle East;
fractures and other mesostructures as strain
and stress indicators; and kinematic analysis
of shear zones, such as the eastern Sinai and
central Sinai-Negev shear zones.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Rich Gibson, Grant Skerlec,
Al Lacazette, and Neil Hurley for their
thoughtful reviews of the manuscript. The
work by Aydin was funded by the Stanford
Shale Smear Project, including Conoco, Elf,
Japan National Oil Corporation (JNOC), and
Norsk Hydro as supporting members at the
time of the study. Aydin would like to thank
these companies for their generous support.
Special thanks to Pete DOnfro of Conoco for
his continuous encouragement.
1368 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
contaminants through rock (Nelson, 1985; Long et al.,
1996). We commonly desire to know about the loca-
tion and ow velocity of these substances and what
would be required to enhance or retard their ow in a
given situation. Finding answers to these questions is
commonly difcult because uid ow in rocks is
strongly heterogeneous, primarily because of faults and
other types of fractures. The effect of faults on uid
ow is complex (Smith, 1980; Caine et al., 1996; Ay-
din, 2000): Some faults are conduits for uids, whereas
others are barriers. A good example of this conduit/
barrier paradox occurs in the Monterey basins in Cali-
fornia (Aydin, 2000), where faults in low-permeability
siliceous rocks transport uids (Dholakia et al., 1998)
and faults in high-permeability sandstones retard uid
ow(Antonellini and Aydin, 1994). The so-called seal-
ing faults have been well known in the oil and gas in-
dustry because of their dramatic impact on reservoir
performance and compartmentalization (for an over-
view, see Weber [1997] and Knipe et al. [1998]). The
reduction of pore-throat size through granulation and
the presence of clay or shale in fault zones are the two
major mechanisms proposed to explain the relatively
low permeability and high sealing capacity of these
faults (Weber et al., 1978; Smith, 1980; Pittman,
1981, 1992; Downey, 1984; Bouvier et al., 1989;
Knipe et al., 1991; Hippler, 1993; Antonellini and Ay-
din, 1994; Gibson, 1994; Weber 1997).
The occurrence of shale in subsurface fault zones
in major oil- and gas-producing provinces the world
over, including the Gulf Coast (Perkins, 1961; Smith,
1966, 1980), the Niger Delta (Weber et al., 1978; Bou-
vier et al., 1989; Jev et al., 1993; Koledoye et al.,
2000), the North Sea (Hardmann and Booth, 1991;
Sassi et al., 1992; Knott, 1993; Fristad et al., 1997),
and the Columbus Basin, Trinidad (Gibson, 1994), is
common knowledge. This information was largely ob-
tained from gamma-ray and dipmeter logs. Core re-
covery from these fault zones is very poor because of
disintegration of fault rock during the coring process,
and the resolution of seismic data is not high enough
to reveal fault-zone architecture and its content. Nev-
ertheless, well tests, together with seismic data and
well logs, show that these faults have relatively low
permeability, thereby providing lateral seals for hydro-
carbons (Bouvier et al., 1989; Jev et al., 1993; Gibson,
1994), very much like shale layers that commonly pro-
vide top seals for reservoirs (Downey, 1984; Grunau,
1987; Watts, 1987; Skerlec, 1999). However, there is
evidence that ow parallel to shale-bearing fault zones
does occur (Weber et al., 1978) and that some of the
faults may leak laterally (Perkins, 1961; Smith, 1966),
perhaps because of breakdown in the continuity of the
shale body (Weber et al., 1978; Gibson, 1994; Weber,
1997). These problems have necessitated eld studies
of the geometry and distribution of shale bodies along
fault zones in structural analogs and the mechanisms
of their emplacements (Weber et al., 1978; Lindsay et
al., 1993; Gibson, 1994; Lehner and Pilaar, 1997; Hey-
nekamp et al., 1999). Detailed eld-based studies of
reservoir-scale faults with shale are rather few; never-
theless, these few studies have described some eld
cases and identied mechanisms for incorporation of
shale into fault zones. The term shale smearing ap-
parently is being used as a broad term to encompass all
shearing-based mechanisms responsible for incorporat-
ing shale into fault zones. We elaborate on this in a
following section.
In this article, we describe the geometry and struc-
tural features of a normal fault with shale smear in a
sequence of sedimentary rocks overlying a crystalline
basement in the Shelomo graben in eastern Sinai,
southern Israel. The arid climate and a stratigraphic
sequence dominated by rocks that are highly resistive
to erosion provide a unique opportunity to study the
architecture of such a fault. We discuss the mechanism
of the shale emplacement and compare this mecha-
nism with other similar structures. This contribution
should help visualize the body of a smeared shale in a
relatively large fault that could be detectable seismi-
cally in a typical reservoir setting. Such an understand-
ing is vital in evaluating the sealing potential of fault
zones with shale smear and assessing where and how
this potential is likely to be reduced or breached.
GEOLOGI C SETTI NG
The Shelomo graben is located about 10 km west-
northwest of the town of Elat in the Gulf of Elat/
Aqaba region (Figure 1) and was studied previously by
several researchers, including Eyal (1967, 1973) and
Garfunkel (1970). The graben structure denes an
elongated body of sedimentary rocks (Figure 2) about
22 km long and 750 m to 6 km wide and trends nearly
north-south in the south and north-northeastsouth-
southwest in the north. The graben is surrounded on
both sides by crystalline rocks of Precambrian age (Fig-
ure 3a). The two major boundary faults of the graben
in the south are the Shelomo fault in the east and the
Gishron fault in the west (Figures 1, 3a). Both faults
are steep normal faults (80), with offsets ranging be-
Aydin and Eyal 1369
Figure 1. Location map of the study area, northwest of the Gulf of Elat /Aqaba. The Shelomo graben with the bounding faults, the
Gishron in the east and Shelomo in the west, is in the center and trends northeast-southwest in the north and north-south in the
south. The bold Y in the lower center of the graben marks the Yehoshafat fault. The coordinates are in Mercator grid of Israel, and
each grid is 5 5 km.
tween 600 and 1500 m and between 200 and 600 m,
respectively. The fault system also has a sinistral strike-
slip component estimated, based on a displaced syn-
cline axis, to be about 450 m for the Shelomo fault
(Eyal, 1973) and, based on a displaced Precambrian
metamorphic contact (Garfunkel, 1970), 8 km for a
broader fault belt that includes the Shelomo and
nearby subparallel faults.
The stratigraphy of the rock units exposed in the
graben comprises about 1500 m of sedimentary rocks
of CambrianMiocene age (Eyal, 1967, 1973; Bartov
et al., 1972) over the crystalline basement. Figure 2 is
a geological column showing the formation names,
thicknesses, and ages. A Precambrian regional pene-
plain was overlain by the thick (470 m) Nubia sand-
stone of continental afnity. The most relevant section
to the present article is a carbonate shelf deposit of
nearly 900 m thick. This sequence includes the Ora
shales, which we refer to as the Ora formation in this
article to avoid confusion due to lithological implica-
tions. This formation factors prominently in faulting as
well as folding. As shown in the right-hand column of
Figure 2, it is composed of an approximately 60 m
thick lower shale member and an approximately 30 m
thick upper shale member separated by a middle
carbonate-bearing unit approximately 20 m thick,
which also has minor thin shale beds. The lower mem-
ber consists of three units, which from the bottom are
about 20 m of shale, about 15 m of alternating shale
and marly limestone layers of 530 cm thickness, and
about 25 m of shale in an upper shale unit.
Some shale units exist above and below the Ora
formation; for instance, a 50 mthick green shale is
found at the base of Paleogene, but this unit is outside
of the interval that we studied. Some thinner argilla-
ceous units exist within the Hazera Formation, the
1370 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
Figure 2. Geologic column. Note the Ora formation (about
110 m thick) within a sedimentary sequence (1500 m thick). As
described in the right-hand column, the Ora formation includes
an upper shale unit (30 m thick), a middle carbonaceous unit
(20 m thick), and a lower shaly unit (60 m thick). The lower
shaly member, from the bottom to the top, is approximately 20
m of shale, approximately 15 m of alternating shale and marly
limestone layers, and approximately 25 m of shale in part of
the lower upper shale unit. Other shale units in the regional
column include a lower Paleogene unit (50 m thick) and a 20
mthick shale within the Hazera, the unit immediately below
the Ora formation. Data are from Eyal (1973).
most important of which is an approximately 20 m
thick unit in the upper section of this formation.
The rocks within the graben are strongly faulted
and folded. Tight folds, less than 1 km long, charac-
terize the southern, narrowpart of the graben, whereas
broad, gentle synclines characterize the northern,
wider part. The common trend of the fold axes is
north-northeast to northeast, oblique to the boundary
faults. Shortening of the strata perpendicular to fold
axes in the southern, narrower part of the graben is up
to 25%, whereas along the northern part it is only 3
4%. An area characterized by strike-slip faulting exists
between the tight and gentle folding, where the She-
lomo fault changes its trend fromnorth-south to north-
northeast.
Faulting responsible for the Shelomo graben oc-
curred in at least two phases (Eyal, 1973). The rst
phase occurred between the postmiddle Eocene and
premiddle Miocene (Garfunkel et al., 1974) and is
associated with the early phase of the opening of the
Gulf of Elat/Aqaba, estimated to be at 20 Ma (Eyal et
al., 1981). The second phase, of postmiddle Miocene
age, is inferred from the central and southern parts of
the graben along the Shelomo fault.
Numerous faults, predominantly normal with a
small sinistral component, occur within the graben.
One of these faults, the Yehoshafat fault near the cen-
ter of the graben (Figures 1, 3), is the focus of our more
detailed study.
ANATOMY OF A NORMAL FAULT WI TH
SHALE SMEAR
The Yehoshafat fault is a normal fault with a trace
length of about 2 km (Figure 3) and a maximumthrow
of about 250 m. The fault dips to the east at a high
angle (80). The map trace of the fault zone is con-
tinuously exposed between the two lateral ends.
Deeply incised drainage (Figure 4), including a 35 m
high waterfall (Figure 5), provides an opportunity to
closely examine a vertical interval along more than 300
m of topographic and structural relief.
Along its entire length and vertical trace, the fault
is marked by what remains of the Ora formation (Fig-
ures 3, 4). This spatial association is direct evidence for
the involvement of the shale units in the faulting pro-
cess beyond an ordinary juxtaposition, because the
maximum offset (250 m) across the fault far exceeds
the total thickness of the Ora formation (110 m).
The geometry of the shale units within the fault zone,
and its comparison with that of the shales in normal
stratigraphic positions in the footwall and hanging wall,
make it possible to evaluate the geometric and me-
chanical changes that occurred as the shale was en-
trained into the fault zone (Figure 4).
The rst important geometric feature of the fault
zone is that the shaly units within the Ora formation
form a monoclinal structure with a steeply dipping
middle section and shallowly dipping limbs (Figures 4,
Aydin and Eyal 1371
Figure 3. (a) Geologic map of
the southern part of the
Shelomo graben with the
bounding faults, the Shelomo in
the east and the Gishron in the
west. The Yehoshafat fault, a 2
kmlong normal fault zone with
about 250 m maximum throw,
is in the middle of the map.
The rectangles show the loca-
tions of Figure 3b and the
waterfall in Figures 4 and 5.
(b) Enlargement of the fault
zone showing schematically the
details of the fault architecture
due to boudinage of the car-
bonate units. (c) West-east
cross section (see Figure 3b for
location) showing the shales of
the lower member within the
fault zone and the associated
carbonates. The upper shale
member vanished along the
fault.
1372 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
Figure 4. Panoramic view due north showing the Ora formation in its normal position on the top left and entering into the Yehoshafat
fault on the top right. Note that remains of this formation occur continuously along the fault zone (see also the geologic map in
Figure 3a). Also shown is the location of the waterfall and its northern (N) and southern (S) exposures (see Figure 5a, b, respectively).
5, 6). However, unlike a simple monocline, here the
steeply dipping middle section corresponds to the fault
zone in the form analogous to a duplex (Figures 6; 7a,
b). The remains of the Ora formation are juxtaposed
against the older footwall units and younger hanging-
wall units in such a way that the shaly members dip
steeply in an orientation approximately parallel with
the fault zone dened by the footwall and hanging-wall
cutoff planes of the older and younger units (Figure 6),
respectively. This is why we use the term duplex to
describe the overall geometry, although the juxtapo-
sition angles between the shaly layers within the fault
zone and the brittle layers in the footwall and hanging
wall are here much higher than those in typical duplex
structures in compressional tectonic environments.
Both topographically and structurally the lowest
part of the Ora formation is exposed at the bottom of
the waterfall (Figure 5a). Here the geometry of the
layers suggests that the lower carbonate units of the
formation diverge from the fault zone to assume their
normal stratigraphic position in the hanging wall.
Thus, the emerging overall fault geometry and the po-
sition of the shale units dene the shale smear cong-
uration depicted schematically in Figure 6.
Detailed examination of the fault zone in the wa-
terfall exposure shown in Figure 5 sheds light onto the
content of the fault rock and the attenuation of the
smeared shale. Thinning perpendicular to the fault and
stretching parallel to the fault of all units of the Ora
formation in the fault zone are remarkable: The shales
within the lower member, with a composite thickness
of more than 45 m in the normal stratigraphic position
(Figure 2), have been reduced to a thickness less than
0.5 m in a few places on the waterfall exposure. This
unit appears to have vanished in other locations
nearby, but the quality of the outcrop does not allow
verication of this. The uppermost shale, which is
about 30 m thick, disappeared along signicant parts
of the fault and may be preserved only in isolated
pockets.
The carbonate-bearing members of the Ora for-
mation appear to be extensively deformed, even brec-
Aydin and Eyal 1373
ciated. The alternating shale and marly limestone lay-
ers of the lower Ora member are broken up by a series
of small faults and joints within the fault zone (lower
right-hand side in Figure 5a). This process represents
the initial stage of the formation of boudins, which
occurs along the fault zone in various scales, depend-
ing on the relative thicknesses of shale and carbonate
units. An excellent example of a small-scale boudi-
nage in the lowermost section of the carbonate-bear-
ing package occurs along a limestone layer about 2 m
thick, the offset pieces of which form a train within a
shaly matrix (Figure 5a). A larger scale example for
this kind of fragmentation is suggested by Figure 5b,
which shows a marly limestone block within the
shales of the lower Ora formation. Similar boudins are
suggested by a train of limestone bodies of the lower
Ora carbonates along the fault zone, as shown in Fig-
ures 3b and 6.
The waterfall exposure (Figure 5) also provides
valuable information about the interaction between
the smeared shale and adjacent structures within the
brittle rock units in the footwall. Vertical fractures
(thicker red lines) in the northern site (Figure 5a),
probably with an initial extension origin, sliced apart
pieces of the Nubia sandstone in the footwall (left-
hand side). Some sandstone lenses (dened by a com-
bination of thick red and yellow lines) were conse-
quently removed from their original positions by
shearing along the joints and bedding planes and were
incorporated into the fault zone. However, the Nubia
sandstone in the southern waterfall area, about 20 m
to the south (see Figure 4 for location), displays well-
developed deformation-band faults (Figure 5b), in con-
trast to the shearing along the joints and bedding planes
in the northern outcrop.
The type, geometry, and distribution of the joints
and faults, shown in Figure 5, can help to evaluate the
possible effects these structures may have on the per-
meability along and across the fault zone. Unambigu-
ous evidence exists for faulting along the lateral bound-
aries of the smeared shale. For example, immediately
south of the waterfall, a zone of the lower shale unit is
well dened by two border faults separating it fromthe
Nubia sandstone on the west side and from the
carbonate-bearing interval of the Ora formation on the
east side. The upper shale is also bounded by a pair of
faults.
Many of the smaller faults in the alternating shale
and marly limestone at high angle to the fault zone,
shown on the right-hand side of Figure 5a, do not ap-
pear to cut across the smeared lower shale unit: They
terminate against the smeared shale. If this observation
can be generalized, it has important implications for
the integrity of the smeared shale and its sealing ca-
pacity. Note that one set of the small faults at the pres-
ent position displays apparent reverse offset (Figure
5a); however, whether these faults formed as reverse
faults or they represent rotated normal faults is not
clear. Regardless of the sense of offset across the indi-
vidual fault sets, the combined current kinematical ef-
fect is such that the rocks are stretched parallel to the
main fault zone and thinned perpendicular to it.
The smeared shale has been deformed by internal
faulting, jointing, and folding. The internal faults
within the shale units are mostly parallel with the
bounding faults and do not pose much hazard for the
lateral sealing efciency. However, in an environment
with abnormally high uid pressure, these faults may
contribute to fault-parallel uid ow in vertical and
lateral directions. The most conspicuous structure
within the smeared lower shale is a network of gypsum
veins (see photo inset in Figure 5a), with individual sets
approximately parallel with and perpendicular to the
fault zone. As the photo shows, the set parallel with
the fault zone (G in photo inset in Figure 5a) is better
developed. However, gypsum veins in this orientation
are known to exist in the undeformed lower Ora shale
(Eyal et al., 1981). Therefore, how gypsum veins are
factors in the stretching and thinning of the shale and
their impact on the permeability and sealing potential
of the fault zone during and after faulting are
uncertain.
DI SCUSSI ON
We have shown that the Ora shales smeared between
a pair of fault surfaces, referred to as a fault duplex in
this article. Such a structure is dened by the footwall
and hanging-wall cutoff planes along the Yehoshafat
fault (Figure 6). This architecture and the associated
juxtaposition angles between the smeared shale layers
and the brittle layers in the footwall and hanging wall,
as idealized in Figure 7a, uniquely separate it from a
monocline over a high-angle basement fault (Figure
7b) and from a ductile shear zone (see, for example,
Twiss and Moores, 1992) with no angular juxtaposi-
tion across the fault (Figure 7c). Furthermore, this ar-
chitecture also differs from those of shale intrusions
(dikes as illustrated in Figure 7d or mud volcanoes) and
common juxtapositions due to offsets by brittle faults
(Figure 7e).
1374 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
Aydin and Eyal 1375
Below the point at which the lower Ora shale di-
verges away from the fault zone to resume its normal
position in the hanging wall (Figure 5a), the fault con-
tinues downward, probably between the Nubia sand-
stone and the Hazera carbonates. Thus, judging from
the existence of extensional fractures and faults, the
character of the fault zone, including its sealing prop-
erty, is somewhat different below this point. A similar
relationship is inferred for the part of the fault above
the point equivalent to the hanging-wall cutoff of the
upper Ora shale (Figures 4, 6). These results highlight
the variation of the faulting process in the vertical di-
rection and its impact on the fault rock distribution in
a multilithology sequence.
The spatial characteristics of the whole fault zone
elucidated in the preceding paragraphs may also be in-
terpreted in a temporal sense (Figure 8): The initial
fracturing may have occurred in one of the competent
units in a brittle mode, given that the tensile strength
of rocks is lower than their shear strength (Figure 8a).
This process leads to the formation of normal faults by
shearing across opening mode fractures. The shale unit
simply reacts to this offset in a ductile manner. The
shearing and stretching of the incompetent units
Figure 5. Waterfall exposures (see Figures 3a and 4 for locations). (a) Northern exposure (view looking toward north; outcrop
delineated by blue line on the top and purple line on the bottom) showing details of the fault-zone architecture, as well as the
associated structures. The lower shale of the lower member of the Ora formation has been reduced to less than 0.5 m in a few
localities. The marly limestone layers within the carbonate-bearing unit have been faulted and jointed. The faults are of both reverse
and normal types. Some isolated layers at the bottom of the sequence show boudinage. The inset shows the gypsum veins (G) within
the smeared shale in the lower part of Figure 5a. The upper shale member vanished at the northern waterfall. (b) Southern exposure
(view looking toward south) showing a steeply dipping fault surface with high-angle slickensides. Also shown is wedging of the
carbonate-bearing unit between two shale units in the lower member. The top shale wedges out toward the northern exposure in
Figure 5a.
1376 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
within a fault zone increase with progressive offset
across the two competent units (Figure 8b). Eventu-
ally, the bounding faults overlap and juxtapose the
competent units against the incompetent shale,
thereby forming a shale smear structure that is analo-
gous to an extensional stepover or a duplex. This struc-
ture elongates and thins as the throw increases (Figure
8c). Note that in our scenario depicted in Figure 8ac,
the growth has been assumed to progress fromthe bot-
tomto the top (a basement-driven deformation). Start-
ing with the failure of the upper brittle unit, however,
should result in similar fault architecture but with a
progression from the top to the bottom.
In the case of a lithologic sequence in which mul-
tiple shale units occur in close proximity to each other,
the neighboring shale units merge into a composite
fault rock with polygenetic shale units (Figure 8d).
This has been described by Weber et al. (1978) and
Lehner and Pilaar (1997) and conceptualized by Kole-
doye et al. (2000). This phenomenon is quite obvious
along the normal fault that we studied (see Figures 3b,
5b). In some cases, however, it is not easy to identify
the origin of the smeared shale and determine whether
it contains a single shale unit or multiple shale units.
Remarkably, the integral thickness of the shaly lay-
ers within the Ora formation (see Figure 2) has been
reduced from a total of 7590 m to less than 0.5 mand
may even be at the critical vanishing point in a few
places along the fault. The continuity of the upper
shale member (30 m), the upper shale unit of the
Figure 6. Cross section show-
ing a conceptual model based
on competency rather than li-
thology. The incompetent upper
shale member vanishes, but the
other incompetent units within
the lower shale member barely
maintain their presence within
the fault zone. The overall fault
structure is analogous to a du-
plex with internal complexities
due to the competent units
within the Ora formation.
Aydin and Eyal 1377
lower member (25 m), and the thickest shaly unit
within the Hazera carbonates (20 m) underlying the
Ora formation has been broken down along a signi-
cant stretch of the fault. Considered individually, these
numbers suggest a range of throw/thickness ratios from
approximately 8 to approximately 13. The continuity
of the lower shale unit (20 m or throw/thickness of
13) is difcult to explain; however, if the lower
member is considered (including the alternating shale
and marly limestone sequence), the throw/thickness
ratio is calculated to be approximately 4. Thus, given
that the continuity of the lower shale member appears
to be near a breakdown, the critical throw/thickness
ratio corresponding to the loss of continuity of individ-
ual smeared shale is more likely to be closer to ap-
proximately 4. This number compares well with the
values of 7 measured by Lindsay et al. (1993; shale
smear factor in their terminology) in the United King-
dom, 4 calculated by Gibson (1994) in the Columbus
Basin, and 5 measured by A. Younes and A. Aydin
(1998, unpublished data) in the Gulf of Suez, Egypt.
An alternative method uses the shale gouge ratio,
dened as the ratio of the cumulative shale thickness
within the throw interval to the fault throw (Fristad et
al., 1997; Yielding et al., 1997). This calculation pro-
vides a range of 0.30.4 (3040%) depending on how
the shales within the carbonate-bearing units are ac-
counted for and if the shale in the Hazera Formation
is included in the total shale budget. In any case, the
lower bound of this range is signicantly higher than
0.180.20, the critical value separating sealing and
nonsealing faults in the subsurface at the North Sea by
this method. All we can conclude is that the range of
the shale gouge ratio values from the fault zone in our
study, in which the continuity of the smeared shale is
merely maintained or may even be broken down, is
Figure 7. Comparison of the
architecture of (a) a fault with
shale smear, (b) a fault-cored
monocline, (c) a ductile shear
zone, (d) a shale dike intrusion,
and (e) a brittle fault zone with
slices of semibrittle shale dis-
placed by individual fault
strands.
1378 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
nearly twice the critical ratio obtained from the faults
in the North Sea. Another method commonly used in
the industry is the smear gouge ratio (Skerlec, 1996,
1999) (sand/shale ratio), which in principle should
give a result similar to the shale gouge ratio.
The distribution of fault-plane surfaces and other
associated small faults and joints within and adjacent
to the fault zone is important for uid ow across and
along the fault zone. We have observed multiple slip
surfaces within the fault. With regard to other small-
scale structures near or within a fault zone that has
shale smear, the only relevant studies are those by We-
ber et al. (1978) and Lehner and Pilaar (1997), who
published schematic maps showing a series of small
dip-slip faults associated with a fault with shale smear.
These secondary faults and their patterns are similar to
those observed in our study (Figure 5a) and idealized
in our conceptual model (Figure 6).
Heynekamp et al. (1999) and Gibson (1994) re-
ported the presence of deformation-band faults within
a sandstone adjacent to smeared shale. We have ob-
served similar structures within the Nubia sandstone
adjacent to the normal fault that we studied (see, for
example, the right-hand side of Figure 5b). However,
we also have observed faults formed by shearing across
high-angle joints within the same formation about 20
m north of this location (Figure 5a). The reason for
such a dramatic change in the sandstone deformation
mechanism in a short distance is puzzling and remains
to be investigated.
With regard to uid ow across the smeared
shale, we note that absolute permeability and capillary
pressure determination of the smeared Ora shales on
a micro scale (in the sense dened by Downey [1984,
p. 1752]) is not of interest within the context of this
article. Methods of performing such a study are avail-
able in the literature (Purcell, 1949; Hubbert, 1953;
Berg, 1975; Brace, 1980; Watts, 1987). Sufce it to
say that a shale layer a few centimeters thick can sup-
port a high column of hydrocarbons (Downey, 1984).
Of interest, however, is evaluating the inuence of
both continuous and discontinuous deformation as-
sociated with the smearing of the Ora shales on the
fault permeability in a macro sense (Downey, 1984),
which would provide a framework for hydraulic char-
acterization of fault zones with shale smear in other
environments.
The small faults within the carbonate-bearing
rocks in the Ora formation terminate against the du-
plex boundary faults as described in a previous section
(Figure 5a) and may not degrade the sealing potential
of the smeared lower shale. These faults display a con-
jugate geometry (Figure 6), and regardless of the sense
of slip across the individual fault sets, the faults result
in stretching parallel to, and thinning perpendicular to,
the fault zone as dened by the duplex structure.
Figure 8. Conceptual model showing temporal evolution of a
fault with shale smear: (a) initial fracturing in lower brittle unit,
(b) faulting of the older and younger brittle units and shearing
of the shale, (c) stretching and thinning of the shale within an
extensional fault step analogous to a duplex structure dened
by the initial faults, and (d) merging of shale units if there is
more than just one shale unit in close proximity where the throw
exceeds the thickness of the middle brittle unit. In this case, the
fault rock is composite with polygenetic shales. Note the juxta-
position of smeared shale and the fault rock formed by brittle
processes in nonshaly units, primarily in Figure 8c, d.
Aydin and Eyal 1379
These observations are consistent with the picture de-
picted by Weber et al. (1978) and Lehner and Pilaar
(1997).
A large body of literature on experimental studies
of the deformation of both consolidated and uncon-
solidated shale (Foster and De, 1971; Arch and Malt-
man, 1990) and on core-based studies from ocean sed-
iments (Knipe et al., 1991; Moore and Vrolijk, 1992)
exists. These studies provide evidence for the rotation
and realignment of clay minerals in localized zones,
compaction, and brittle fracturing, as well as crystal
plasticity. Of special interest is the effect of shearing
on permeability: Permeability increases parallel to, and
decreases perpendicular to, the shear zone (Arch and
Maltman, 1990). The gypsum veins were uid-ow
pathways at the time of their formation, and judging
from their aperture, they must have contributed to the
fault-parallel ow of briny water. This relationship is
similar to that established for the sediments deformed
in accretionary environments (Moore and Vrolijk,
1992). The impact of the veins on the permeability of
the smeared shale matrix following the precipitation of
gypsum has probably been negligible.
In the geological literature, there are various no-
tions about mechanical mixing of various lithological
rock units within fault zones and the mechanismof this
mixing. For example, based on their eld observations,
Lehner and Pilaar (1997) suggested that either no or
very little lithological admixing occurs in the smeared
shale. However, a group of authors from Shell (Weber
et al., 1978), including Lehner and Pilaar, also de-
scribed lensoidal sand bodies within the smeared shale
in the Niger Delta, suggesting that the internal struc-
ture of the faults is more complicated than that made
up of a tabular body of deformed shale. Similarly, a
train of sandstone bodies surrounded by smeared shales
has been schematically illustrated by Gibson (1994) in
his conceptual diagram. Our observations show that
trains of nonshale units are common within the
smeared zone and this mixing is due to boudinage of
brittle units. The distribution of shale and nonshale li-
thologies in both vertical and horizontal directions
varies dramatically because of the boudinage congu-
ration, and it changes froma carbonate-dominated sec-
tion to an almost 100% shale section, as illustrated in
Figure 5b. Although the boudinage geometry de-
scribed in this article appears to be different from the
necking geometry proposed by Lehner and Pilaar
(1997), the extreme variability of the smeared shale
thickness is the common denominator for both atten-
uation mechanisms. Other gouge concepts (FAPS
News, 1995; Skerlec, 1996, 1999; Fristad et al., 1997;
Yielding et al., 1997) are hypothetical and stochastic
and do not say anything about the fault architecture; a
physical interpretation of these other results is difcult
because of the lack of a conceptual framework for the
mechanism of faulting in these methods.
A poorly understood aspect of shale smear is the
effects of the mechanical properties of the lithologies
involved. Direct surface observations and the subsur-
face data show that the phenomenon occurs in both
unlithied sediments and lithied rocks (Weber et al.,
1978; Lindsay et al., 1993). A certain degree of duc-
tility is clearly a prerequisite for shale to be smeared;
however, the details of this relationship are not known.
The example given in this article represents a series of
Upper Cretaceous shale units within a carbonate shelf
environment. The faulting started from the middle
Miocene and probably continued to the present, given
that the area is situated in a tectonically active region.
Another question regarding the scale effect on
shale smear has been raised by Lindsay et al. (1993).
Unfortunately, almost all of the outcrop examples re-
ported by previous investigators come from either
small-scale faults with throws on the order of a few
meters or less or from a rather restricted window of
observation at a mine or a quarry (Weber et al., 1978;
Lindsay et al., 1993). A broadscale range of faults with
shale smear must be studied and analyzed for under-
standing possible scale effects. This article provides in-
formation froma large fault that should ll in the upper
range of scales and shows that the smearing occurs in
reservoir-scale faults in a fashion similar to that in
small-size examples described from other locations.
CONCLUDI NG REMARKS
We described the architecture of a reservoir-scale nor-
mal fault with shale. The Ora formation marks the
trace of the fault zone within the 250 m throw inter-
val. The internal architecture of the fault zone is
strongly inuenced by the distribution of the shale
units, as well as the carbonate-bearing units, within
the formation. The spatial distribution of these lithol-
ogies shows signicant variation along the faulted in-
terval. The thickness of the smeared shale is reduced
to less than 0.5 m and may be close to the vanishing
point in a few places. The carbonate-bearing rock bod-
ies show signicant boudinage that results in a high
degree of lithological and structural variation along
the fault zone. The relative proportion of the shale
1380 Normal Fault with Shale Smear
within the carbonate-bearing units may have impor-
tant implications for the behavior of these units.
We discussed several parameters related to
(1) where and how faults may incorporate shale into
the fault zones, therein acting as a lateral seal for uid
movement, and (2) where and how the sealing poten-
tial of these faults may be breached because of the
breakdown in the continuity of the smeared shale and
other secondary faults and joints. We compared and
contrasted our observations and interpretation with
those from other studies. In general, our results are
consistent with those from previous eld-based
studies.
Although we studied one fault, the results pre-
sented in this article should help to visualize faults with
shale smear and the distribution of attendant structures
in analogous subsurface situations. We elucidated a
possible temporal evolution of the fault zone in brittle/
ductile multilayers. Quite probably, this temporal pro-
gression and the dimensional characteristics of the brit-
tle and ductile units are critical for the nal fault-zone
architecture. For example, the shale layers of the lower
member may have merged to form a composite shale
unit at a throw value of 15 m, the thickness of the
alternating shale and marly limestone in the middle of
the member. After this stage, the sum of the shales
within the lower member (45 m) represents the ef-
fective thickness for the shales for calculating the
throw/thickness ratio as used in our calculation pre-
sented in a previous section.
Several problems are promising candidates for fu-
ture studies in the area. Among these are (1) a detailed
characterization of the distribution of the fault-zone
material along the entire 2 km exposure of the fault,
(2) a better lithological and petrophysical characteriza-
tion of alternating shale and limestone layers and their
temporal behavior within the fault zone, and (3) vari-
ation of the faulting-related structures within the foot-
wall or hanging-wall rocks adjacent to the fault zone.
A good understanding of these topics is a prerequisite
for subsurface applications in which problems are al-
most always underdetermined.
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