Type Locality:

Shell B.A. Bluesky No. 1, in Lsd. 4, Sec. 29, Twp. 81, Rge. 1W6M, Alberta, between 834.5 and 857 m (2,736 and 2,810 ft).

Distribution:

The Bluesky is 23 m (74 ft) thick in the type well. It thickens to 46 m (1 51 ft) in the Pouce Coupe area and pinches out to shale in northwestern Alberta. Thinner sands are usually encountered north and south of Peace River, with irregular distribution throughout the Peace River area of Alberta and British Columbia.

Locality Data:

WELL 100042908101W600; SHELL 1 B.A. BLUESKY 4-29-81-1. Interval(m): From 834.5, To 875.

Lithology:

Sandstone, brown to brownish grey, fine- to medium-grained, usually glauconitic, containing fair porosity. Chert granules may appear at the top and in the Peace River town area the salt-and-pepper sand is saturated with tarry oil. West, north and east from the town of Peace River the sandstone becomes more quartzose.

Relationship:

The Bluesky rests conformably on sandstones, shales and coals of the Gething Formation or unconformably on Mississippian limestones and shales north and east of Peace River town. It is overlain conformably by the Wilrich Member of the Spirit River Formation. It is in effect the homotaxial shallow bar facies of the Wilrich marine transgression. It correlates homotaxially with the "glauconite sandstone" of the Mannville Formation of central and east-central Alberta, and corresponds to the Wabiskaw Member of the base of the Clearwater Formation in the lower Athabasca River area of northern Alberta. To the southwest Bluesky beds are difficult to distinguish from the underlying Gething Formation.

History:

The Alberta Study Group (1954) defined the Bluesky as the sandstone with the underlying shale overlying the Gething; Workman (1959) limited the name to the sandstone, showing that the sand is the deposit formerly known as the "Glauconitic Sand" and the underlying shale is the "Ostracode Zone". In the Peace River area the shale lacks the ostracodes and is in a cleaner marine facies.

Other Citations:

Caldwell et al., 1978; Singh, 1971.

References:

Alberta Study Group, 1954. Lower Cretaceous of the Peace River region. In: Western Canada Sedimentary Basin; Clark, L.M. (Ed.). Amer. Assoc. Petrol. Geol., p. 268-278.

Badgley, Peter C., 1952. Notes on the subsurface stratigraphy and oil and gas geology of the Lower Cretaceous series in central Alberta (Report and seven figures); Geological Survey of Canada, Paper No. 52-11, 12 p.

Caldwell, W.G.E., North, B.R., Stelck, C.R., and Wall, J.H., 1978. A foraminiferal zonal scheme for the Cretaceous System in the Interior Plains of Canada. In: Western and Arctic Canadian biostratigraphy; Stelck, C.R. and Chatterton, B.D.E. (Eds.). Geol. Assoc. Can., Spec. Paper 18, p. 495-575.

Singh, Chaitanya, 1971. Lower Cretaceous Microfloras of the Peace River Area, Northwestern Alberta, 2 Vols; Research Council of Alberta, Bulletin 28, 542 p.

Workman, L.R., 1959. The Blairmore Group in the subsurface of Alberta. Alberta Soc. Petrol. Geol., 9th Ann. Field Conf. Guidebook, p. 122-129.