--> ABSTRACT: Paleo-Heatflow of the Red Sea-Gulf of Suez: Delineating Hypothermal Hydrocarbon Fairways through Time and Space, by J. D. Pigott and G. Teferra; #91021 (2010)
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Paleo-Heatflow of the Red Sea-Gulf of Suez: Delineating Hypothermal Hydrocarbon Fairways through Time and Space 

PIGOTT, JOHN D., and GIRMACHEW TEFERRA

The thermal state of the Red Sea is reconstructed for the past 25 Ma by solving a Dirichlet heat flow Previous HitboundaryNext Hit Previous HitvalueNext Hit Previous HitproblemTop incorporating heatflow measurements compiled from oceanographic surveys and borehole temperatures and their harmonically averaged thermal conductivities. The crustal thermal budget can be represented as the sum of non-steady state heat flow (cooling lithosphere) and radioactive heat generation (minor contribution) minus advective heat loss by heat refraction in salt and heat loss by fluid flow (both locally important but regionally negligible). Through geological (lithologic and tectonic) and geophysical (seismic stratigraphic) constraints, a series of 5 Ma incremented maps are generated. Observations of heat flow variations through time and space reveal that the Red Sea is neither uniformly elevated in heatflow with respect to average lithosphere nor does it contain a symmetric distribution of heat flow values about its rifting axes. Instead, there are areas of depressed heatflows with respect to the surrounding elevated regional trends. Such observations on a regional scale cannot be easily explained as a product simply of statistical sampling error. instead, these hypothermal zones may imply thickened normal conductivity lithosphere (perhaps of underlying pre-Miocene) and/or localized heat refraction through salt conduits. In either case, such zones indicate the existence of hypothermal fairways potentially conducive to liquid hydrocarbon maturation, expulsion and accumulation within a surrounding thermally elevated region otherwise predominated by gas prospectivity owing to thermal cracking. 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91021©1997 AAPG Annual Convention, Dallas, Texas.