Mesozoic Rift Basins in Western Desert of Egypt, Their Southern Extension and Impact on Future Exploration

Mohamed A. Taha

Rift basins are a primary target of exploration in east, central, and west Africa. These intracratonic rift basins range in age from the Triassic to the Neogene and are filled with lagoonal-lacustrine sand-shale sequences. Several rift basins may be present in the Western Desert of Egypt.

In the northeastern African platform, the Mesozoic Tethyan strand lines were previously interpreted to have limited southern extension onto the continent. This concept, based upon a relatively limited amount of subsurface data, has directed and focused the exploration for oil and gas to the northernmost 120 km of the Western Desert of Egypt. Recent well and geophysical data indicate a southerly extension of Mesozoic rift basins several hundred kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea. Shushan/Faghur and Abu Gharadig/Bahrein basins may represent subparallel Mesozoic basins, trending northeast-southwest. Marine Oxfordian-Kimmeridgian sediments were recently reported from wells drilled approximately 500 km south of the present-day Mediterranean shoreline. The link of these basins wit the Sirte basin to the southwest in Libya is not well understood. Exploration is needed to evaluate the hydrocarbon potential of such basins.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91032©1988 Mediterranean Basins Conference and Exhibition, Nice, France, 25-28 September 1988.