The Upper Cretaceous Gammon Shale has served as both source bed and reservoir rock for accumulations of natural gas. Gas-producing and nonproducing zones in the Gammon Shale are differentiated on the basis of geophysical log interpretation. To determine the physical basis of the log responses, mineralogical, cation-exchange, textural, and chemical analyses were conducted on core samples from both producing and nonproducing portions of a well in the Gammon Shale from southwestern North Dakota. Statistical treatment (2 sample t-test and discriminant function analysis) of the laboratory data indicate that the producing and nonproducing zones differ significantly in mixed-layer clay content (7 vs. 12%), weight proportion of the clay-size (0.5-1.0 μm) fraction (5.3 vs. 6.3%) ratio of Ca2+ to Na+ extracted during ion exchange (1.4 vs. 1.0), and abundance of dolomite (10 vs. 8%). The geophysical logs apparently record subtle differences in composition and texture which probably reflect variations in the original detrital constituents of the Gammon sediments. Successfully combining log interpretation and clay petrology aids in understanding the physical basis of log response in clay-rich rocks and enhances the effectiveness of logs as predictive geologic tools.

Viscosity and light-transmission measurements of dilute suspensions of montmorillonites having different exchangeable cations were used to calculate relative particle sizes as a function of cation composition, where particle size is expressed as the number of clay plates per tactoid relative to the number of plates per tactoid for Li-montmorillonite, after exchange of Li, Na, K, Cs, and Mg by Ca. Tactoid sizes increased in the order Li < Na < K < Mg < Ca, with the number of plates per tactoid relative to Li-montmorillonite varying from 1.5 for Na- to 6.1 for Ca-montmorillonite. The results for tactoid sizes derived from light transmission and those derived from viscosity data are in reasonable agreement with each other and with literature data for similar systems. Upon exchange of Ca-counterions for Li-, Na-, or K-coun-terions, a sharp initial decrease in tactoid size was observed over approximately the first 30% of cation exchange. Upon further exchange, tactoid sizes changed only slightly, but when Ca was exchanged for Cs or Mg, a much more gradual decrease in particle size was observed.