Deep gas well encounters ultramafic kimberlite-like material in the Sauk Sequence of southeastern Ohio, USA

The first indication of a potential deep-subsurface kimberlite-like material in the Appalachian Basin, without surface expression, has been discovered in oil and gas well drilling samples from a deep well drilled near Zanesville, Ohio, USA. The well was drilled into the Cambrian Sauk Sequence within a localized fault-bounded graben, where a zone of ultramafic rocks was encountered. The zone of ultramafic rocks is within Sauk carbonates at 1720 m below sea level and is not highly anomalous on geophysical wire-line well logs. Petrographic analyses of grain-mounted samples show a 20 m zone of ultramafic rock material near the top of the Conasauga Group. Well cuttings from the ultramafic zone include relatively fresh phenocrysts of phlogopite with calcite, apatite, and titaniferous magnetite, in a secondary matrix of amphibole, chlorite, Fe-oxides, and possibly serpentine. The rocks have undergone deuteric alteration and probably later hydrothermal alteration.