The Hydrocarbon
Prospectivity of the Eastern Black Sea
Vincent, Stephen J.1, Andrew
C. Morton2, Andrew Carter3, Li Guo1, Samantha
Gibbs4, Samuel P. Rice1, Nada Kozman5 (1)
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom (2) HM Research Associates,
West Midlands, United Kingdom (3) University College London - Birkbeck College,
London, United Kingdom (4) University of Southampton, Southampton, United
Kingdom (5) Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
The Eastern Black Sea is one of the few remaining
frontier basins within southwest Asia. It shares many similarities with the South Caspian Basin: a prolific (Maykopian)
source rock, a thick Tertiary sedimentary pile and basement consisting of
oceanic crust of poorly constrained age. Exploration models, in part, have also
been imported from the South Caspian Basin, with large volumes of
quartz-rich Russian Platform-sourced sediments postulated to have been
delivered to the basin via a palaeo-Volga River equivalent, the
palaeo-Don. Unlike in the South Caspian, however, the Greater
Caucasus, Europe's highest mountain
chain, currently forms a significant obstacle to such sediment dispersal
systems entering into the Eastern Black Sea, with them being
deflected around its western tip. This paper will review the available field
evidence for the timing of Western Greater Caucasus uplift and will discuss the
implications these have on the potential for Tertiary reservoir-quality
sandstones being present within the basin. Alternative, Upper Jurassic
carbonate reservoir systems will also be discussed along with other key
elements of the Eastern Black Sea petroleum system.