The Beekmantown Group in the Quebec Lowlands was deposited as part of an extensive Early Ordovician coastal and shallow marine complex on the eastern margin of the North American craton. The Beekmantown is stratigraphically equivalent to the Beekmantown, Knox, Arbuckle, and Ellenburger rocks of the United States, and is subdivided into two formations: the sandstone-rich Theresa Formation and the overlying dolomite-rich Beauharnois. Dolomites of the Beekmantown provide an important exploration target in both the autochthon and the overlying thrust sheets of the Canadian and U.S. Appalachians.

The reservoir potential of the autochthonous Beekmantown Group in the Quebec Lowlands can be determined from seismic data, well logs, cuttings, and petrographic analyses of depositional and diagenetic textures. Deposition of the Beekmantown occurred along the western passive margin of the Iapetus Ocean. By the Late Ordovician, the passive margin had been transformed into a foreland basin. Faulting locally positioned Upper Ordovician Utica source rocks against the Beekmantown and contributed to forming hydrocarbon reservoirs. The largest Beekmantown reservoir found to date is the St. Flavien field, with 7.75 bcf of original gas (methane) in place in fractured and possibly karst-influenced allochthonous dolomites within a thrust-fault anticline.

The Beekmantown below the thrust sheets forms a northward-thinning wedge of peritidal and subtidal deposits. Seven major depositional units can be distinguished in cuttings and correlated with wireline logs. Most of these units form northward-thinning sediment wedges and were deposited on a gently dipping ramp. Quartz sandstones dominate updip, whereas shallow, subtidal, pelletal to skeletal limestones dominate downdip. A widespread blanket of shaly dolomite is the uppermost unit of the Beekmantown, but is of poor reservoir quality.

Dolomites in the Beekmantown contain vuggy, moldic, intercrystalline, and fracture porosity. Early porosity formed at the top of the major depositional units in peritidal dolomites; however, much of this porosity was later filled by late-stage calcite cement after hydrocarbon migration. Thus, a key to finding gas reservoirs in the autochthonous Beekmantown is to define Ordovician paleostructures in which early and continuous entrapment of hydrocarbons prevented later cementation.