Global Neoproterozoic Petroleum Systems: The Emerging Potential in North Africa

Neoproterozoic successions are major hydrocarbon producers around the world. In North Africa, large basins with significant surface outcrops and thick sedimentary fills are widespread. These basins are now emerging as potential sources of hydrocarbons and are attracting interest from geological researchers in academia and the oil and gas industry.
This volume focuses on recent developments in the understanding and correlation of North African basin fills and explores novel approaches to prospecting for source and reservoir rocks. The papers cover aspects of petroleum prospectivity and age-equivalent global petroleum systems, Neoproterozoic tectonics and palaeogeography, sequence stratigraphy, glacial events and global climatic models, faunal and floral evolution and the deposition of source rocks.
The broader aim of this volume is to compare major environmental change, the emergence of life, the global carbon cycle and the implications for hydrocarbon exploration of well-studied Neoproterozoic successions worldwide.
Infracambrian hydrocarbon source rock potential and petroleum prospectivity of NW Africa
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Published:January 01, 2009
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CiteCitation
S. Lüning, S. Kolonic, M. Geiger, B. Thusu, J. S. Bell, J. Craig, 2009. "Infracambrian hydrocarbon source rock potential and petroleum prospectivity of NW Africa", Global Neoproterozoic Petroleum Systems: The Emerging Potential in North Africa, J. Craig, J. Thurow, B. Thusu, A. Whitham, Y. Abutarruma
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Abstract
Proven Infracambrian hydrocarbon plays occur in various parts of the world, including Oman, the former Soviet Union, India, Pakistan and Australia. Organic-rich strata also occur in NW Africa, and gas shows originating from Infracambrian hydrocarbon source rocks are known from well Abolag-1 in the Mauritanian part of the Taoudenni Basin. The distribution of Infracambrian source rocks in North Africa is patchy and deposition commonly occurred in half-graben and pull-apart basins. In these intra-shelf basins, marine, organic-rich shales and limestones were deposited beneath the turbulent wave zone, away from the coarse siliciclastic Pan-African molasse detritus. On the West African Craton...