Siliciclastic
Encyclopedia
Siliciclastic rocks are clastic noncarbonate
Carbonate
In chemistry, a carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, . The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C2....

 sedimentary rocks that are almost exclusively silica-bearing, either as forms of quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...

 or other silicate minerals
Silicate minerals
The silicate minerals make up the largest and most important class of rock-forming minerals, constituting approximately 90 percent of the crust of the Earth. They are classified based on the structure of their silicate group...

. All siliciclastic rocks are formed by inorganic processes, or deposited through some mechanical process, such as stream deposits that are subsequently lithified. They are sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

based rocks accounting for about 50 - 60% of the world oil and gas exploration.The other silicate minerals that are generally present in siliciclastic sedimentary rocks are feldspar, biotite etc.
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