Pulsed Basin Development on Northern Margin of South China Sea

Ke Ru, John D. Pigott

Detailed analysis of the geothermal gradients, structural architecture, genetic stratigraphy, and subsidence rate history of the sedimentary basins on the northern margin of the South China Sea (NMSC) reveal three temporally distinct but regionally correlative tectonic extensional episodes. The timing of these pulsed episodes of basin development are: Episode One, Late Cretaceous to Paleocene; Episode Two, late Eocene to early Oligocene; and Episode Three, middle Miocene.

Each initiating episode on the NMSC is characterized by an ephemeral (< 10 m.y.) increase in heat flow (> 3 HFU), formation of regionally en echelon grabens or half-grabens, ensuing transgression, and high subsidence rate (> 50 m/m.y.). Trends of basin boundaries and major fault trends evolved from predominantly northeast for Episode One, to northeast and east-west for Episode Two, and to northwest and east-west and for Episode Three.

Tectonically, the northeast and east-west trends resulted primarily from rifting along northwest and north-south extensional directions, respectively. The orientation, sense of displacement and time of activation of the Red River fault, Vietnam fracture zone, and the northeast-east-west and northwest-east-west multiple sets of fractures may be explained as responses to episodic changes in the regional stress field utilizing the guidance of inherited zones of crustal weakness. The timing and extent of the hydrocarbon maturation, reservoir development, and stratigraphic-structural closure in the NMSC were directly affected by this pulsed tectonic activity. Therefore, exploration strategies based purely upon the NMSC being a passive rifted margin are both inappropriate and misleading.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91038©1987 AAPG Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, June 7-10, 1987.