Spirit River Formation
geological unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin
The Spirit River Formation is a stratigraphic unit of middle Albian age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.
It takes the name from the Spirit River, and was first described in Imperial Oil Spirit River No. 1 well by Badgley in 1952.
Lithology
The Spirit River Formation consists, from bottom to top of fine to medium grained argillaceous sandstone, dark shale, ironstone, greywacke, shale, siltstone, coal and dark shale with thin sandstone and siltstone stringers.
Hydrocarbon production
Gas is produced from channels developed in the Falher Member in northern Alberta.
Hydraulic fracturing in Canada
'Massive' hydraulic fracturing has been widely used in Alberta since the late 1970s to recover gas from low-permeability sandstones of the Spirit River Formation. Massive hydraulic fracturing has been widely used in Alberta since the late 1970s. The method is currently used in development of the Cardium, Duvernay, Montney and Viking formations in Alberta, Bakken formation in Saskatchewan, Montney and Horn River formations in British Columbia.
Distribution
The Spirit River Formation reaches a maximum thickness of 348 metres (1,140 ft). It is found in the sub-surface in the Peace River Country, in an area stretching from Fort St.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Spirit River Formation” is geological unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Spirit, River and Formation, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7577912. Authority coordinates are 55.775, -118.906. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spirit River Formation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.