--> ABSTRACT: Hydrocarbon Accumulations and Future Potential in the Kopet Dagh Fold Belt, South Caspian Basin, Western Turkmenistan, by M. A. Torres; #91021 (2010)

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Hydrocarbon Accumulations and Future Potential in the Kopet Dagh Fold Belt, South Caspian Basin, Western Turkmenistan

TORRES, MAX A.

After the intensive development of the onshore Apsheron trend giant fields, the activity shifted to the offshore Apsheron and the Kopet Dagh fold belts and in the early eighties an important potential was recognized. In the Late Neogene, collisional orogenies were registered in the surrounding thrust belts of the South Caspian basin intracontinental depression (Paleocene back-arc). Detachment tectonics resulted in a series of parallel, axially faulted, N-S to NE-SW fold trends. Subsidence and accommodation rates were high due to combined loading and thermal cooling effects and a large westwards prograding deltaic wedge from the paleo/Amu Darya system deposited a thick clastic section of 6000 meters in an region of over 60,000 sq. km. The Middle Pliocene (Red Color Formation) producing reservoirs are overpressurized (16.5 ppg at total depth), multistory sandstone beds, deposited in shallow marine to upper delta plain environments. Typical producing depths range from 1500 to 3500 meters. Field sizes in the fold belt range between 86 to 1 MMBO with a mean size of 37 MMBO. Maturity studies indicate sourcing from the Miocene (Upper?) and present depth of the oil window top is approximately at 4000 meters in the producing areas. Commercial accumulations were found only in the outermost of the three known closure trends with modest discoveries in the second trend, probably related to trap timing and late charging. Large areas remain unexplored, particularly the offshore, where several prospects were identified, and the onshore Pliocene deeper horizons. Further potential of the foldbelt is thought to be related to a Miocene unconformity play in the coastal areas as indicated on reprocessed seismic.

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