Part 4 - Berg - Hughes Center

Haynesville-Buckner Formation
Producing Parishes
Bossier, Claiborne
Forgotson and Forgotson (1976) described the Haynesville in southern Arkansas and
northern Louisiana, as red shales and pink to white sandstones that grade laterally into the
Gilmer Limestone in East Texas and basinward into black shale lithologically similar to
the Bossier Shale. In some areas, the Haynesville or Gilmer Limestone (commonly called
Cotton Valley Lime) rests unconformably on the Smackover Formation. The Buckner
Member of the Haynesville (primarily red shale, sandstone, anhydrite, and limestone
lenses) is transitional with the underlying Smackover limestone. According to Salvador
(1987), the lower Buckner (Kimmeridgian) section reflects depositional environments
that are less marine or shallower water marine than those of the underlying Oxfordian
Smackover, because the Buckner consists of evaporitic deposits and associated red beds
formed in hypersaline coastal lagoons or sabkhas. At North Haynesville field, most of the
thick Buckner consists largely of red and greenish-gray mudstone and shale with varying
amounts of nodular anhydrite and with a few thin beds of white to red, anhydritic
sandstone (Bishop, 1971).
In Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, Dickinson (1968a, 1968b, 1969) divided the
Buckner into two members, each of which is gradational with the Smackover in different
areas. The lower is predominantly anhydrite and anhydritic mudstone, and was deposited
in an evaporite basin north of a chain of salt-cored anticlines. The upper member consists
largely of red and greenish-gray mudstone and shale with nodular anhydrite. Several
zones of calcarenites similar to those of the Smackover are present in a general east-west
trend area, and at least one of them, the "A" zone, extends regionally across most of
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