An Integrated Biostratigraphic Reassessment of the Douala/Kribi-Campo Basin, West Africa

Jean-P. Loule, Richard Seme Abomo, Martin Folo

Exploration in the Douala/Kribi-Campo basin for more than fourty years has been based on local, scattered and scanty biostratigraphic data from various oil companies. Formation boundaries were often determined on the appearence/extinction of single specimens, and the assumption that stage boundaries are marked by the simultaneous evolutionary appearence/extinction of a number of species from different groups of fossils. Thus, formation names were equated to stage names (e.g. The Oligocene suellaba formation or else the Miocene Matanda formation) and local biozones were extended at the basin scale on pure intuition. To circumvent this misleading situation, an integrated biostratigraphic reassessment of the Douala/Kribi-Campo basin was effected using data from eight signifi ant wells.

This reassessment led to the definition of an improved stratigraphic scheme which has helped unravel the complex geology of this northernmost West Africa, Salt Basin. Some important results are: the definition of a new formation named the Kribi formation of upper pliocene age, the revision of formation ages (e.g. The Matanda formation previously known as Miocene in age is rather upper Pliocene), the subdivision of both the Mundeck and Nkapa formations into two chronostratigraphic Units, and the evidence, as of lower Oligocene, of an evolutionary discrepancy in the sedimentary record between the southern and northern parts of the basin.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91020©1995 AAPG Annual Convention, Houston, Texas, May 5-8, 1995