Transform Margins: Development, Controls and Petroleum Systems
This volume covers the linkage between new transform margin research and increasing transform margin exploration. It offers a critical set of predictive tools via an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of play concept elements at transform margins. It ties petroleum systems knowledge to the input coming from research focused on dynamic development, kinematic development, structural architecture and thermal regimes, together with their controlling factors. The volume does this by drawing from geophysical data (bathymetry, seismic, gravity and magnetic studies), structural geology, sedimentology, geochemistry, plate reconstruction and thermo-mechanical numerical modelling. It combines case studies (covering the Andaman Sea, Arctic, Coromandal, Guyana, Romanche, St. Paul and Suriname transform margins, the French Guyana hyper-oblique margin, the transtensional margin between the Caribbean and North American plates, and the Davie transform margin and its neighbour transform margins) with theoretical studies.
Development history of the southern terminus of the Central Atlantic; Guyana–Suriname case study
-
Published:January 01, 2016
-
CiteCitation
M. Nemčok, S. Rybár, M. Odegard, W. Dickson, O. Pelech, L. Ledvényiová, M. Matejová, M. Molčan, S. Hermeston, D. Jones, E. Cuervo, R. Cheng, G. Forero, 2016. "Development history of the southern terminus of the Central Atlantic; Guyana–Suriname case study", Transform Margins: Development, Controls and Petroleum Systems, M. Nemčok, S. Rybár, S. T. Sinha, S. A. Hermeston, L. Ledvényiová
Download citation file:
- Share
-
Tools
Abstract
The study focuses on the offshore Guyana–Suriname–French Guiana region. It draws from seismic, well, gravimetric and magnetic data. They indicate that the continental break-up along the western margin of the Demerara Plateau took place during the Callovian–Oxfordian, associated with the Central Atlantic opening, and accommodated by normal faults. The continental break-up in the SE offshore Guyana accommodated by strike-slip faults was coeval. The continental break-up along the NE and eastern margins of the Demerara Plateau took place during the late Aptian–Albian, associated with the opening of the Equatorial Atlantic, and accommodated by dextral strike-slip and normal faults, respectively.
Different spreading vectors of the Central and Equatorial Atlantic required development of the Accommodation Block during the late Aptian/Albian–Paleocene in their contact region, and in the region between the Central Atlantic and its southernmost portion represented by the Offshore Guyana Block, which were separated from each other by the opening Equatorial Atlantic. Its role was to accommodate for about 20° mismatch between the Central and Equatorial Atlantic spreading vectors, which has decreased from the late Aptian/Albian to Paleocene down to 0°.
Differential movements between the Central and Equatorial Atlantic oceans were also accommodated by strike-slip faults of the Guyana continental margin, some active until the Paleocene.
