Permeability of rock samples from Cajon Pass, California

Room temperature, steady‐state flow measurements of permeability were conducted on 15 unfractured core samples collected at depths between 270 and 2100 m in the Cajon Pass drillhole. Confining and pore pressures were set to the lithostat and hydrostat for each depth. The first 500 m encountered in the drill hole is composed of sandstones with typically high permeabilities of around 10 −17 m². The crystalline rocks between 500 and 2100 m show a systematic decrease in permeability with depth from 10 −19 to less than 10 −21 m². These values are particularly low relative to the applied effective stresses of only 10‐30 MPa, and may be a result of the extensive crack healing that was observed in most samples.