Facies, textural and geochemical evaluation of the post-Santonian sandstones in the Bida basin, Nigeria: Implications for control on hydrocarbon sandstone reservoir characteristics and paleoenvironments

Using a combination of field observations, textural analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mineralogical X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), and thin-section analysis, the hydrocarbon and paleoenvironmental characteristics of the Cretaceous sandstones of the southern Bida Basin, Nigeria, were evaluated. SEM data were used to display the mineral morphology, degree of cementation and presence of clay minerals on the grain surfaces and their pores on both sandstones of the Patti and Lokoja formations. The lithofacies analyses revealed three distinct facies associations. The XRD data showed that for the Lokoja and Patti sandstone reservoirs contained quartz from 49 to 67% and 43–68%, respectively. The XRF data also showed that both formations' sandstone reservoirs have a high percentage of silicon and low aluminum content. The grain size study showed that the Lokoja sandstone reservoirs include medium-coarse sandstone (−0.63 to 1.30 ф) that are poorly-moderately sorted (0.72–1.82 ф). In contrast, the Patti Formation is primarily made up of fine-medium sandstones at investigated outcrops, which typically display reasonably good to poor sorting (0.70–2.53 ф). The skewness of the sandstone reservoirs ranged from fine to coarse, and their kurtosis ranged from very platykurtic to leptokurtic. The research area's predominant depositional environments include shoreface/foreshore, estuary mudflat, and estuarine delta with fluvial interference, according to an analysis that combined sedimentary facies and textural data. This demonstrates that the sandstones from the two units have moderate quality prospective hydrocarbon reservoirs based on their physical and chemical characteristics.