Chattanooga Shale
| Chattanooga Shale | |
|---|---|
| Stratigraphic range: Devonian | |
Chattanooga Shale in Kentucky | |
| Type | Formation |
| Underlies | Maury Shale, Boone Formation |
| Overlies | Unconformity on Ordovician Cumberland Formation Leipers Limestone and other units |
| Lithology | |
| Primary | Shale |
| Other | Sandstone |
| Location | |
| Region | Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi |
| Country | United States |
| Type section | |
| Named by | Charles Willard Hayes |
The Chattanooga Shale is a geological formation in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. It preserves conodont fossils dating to the Devonian period. It occurs mostly as a subsurface geologic formation composed of layers of shale. It is located in East Tennessee and also extends into southeastern Kentucky, northwestern Georgia, and northern Alabama. This part of Alabama is part of the Black Warrior Basin.
The Chattanooga Shale of East Tennessee is reported to be an extension of or correlates with the Marcellus Shale of the Appalachian region to the east. Exploratory drilling of the Chattanooga Shale in East Tennessee indicates that it contains significant amounts of natural gas. This has resulted in interest in and attempts to use hydraulic fracturing to exploit the resource.
This is a particularly interesting structure, both in terms of what it represents for the region's petroleum infrastructure, and in terms of what it represented for the ancient landscapes in which it embedded.