Print this pageFrontier Basins Onshore Brazil
The latest deep-water sub-salt discoveries offshore Brazil have captured the attention of the petroleum industry. However, the development and production in the deep water remains a challenging and expensive enterprise. At the same time, large interior areas with petroleum potential are still under-explored. Among them are the Solimões, Amazonas, and Paraná basins, which alone comprise nearly 2,700,000 square kilometers of sedimentary basins. The well coverage in these areas varies between 4,000 to 10,000 square kilometers per well. This work reviews the geological settings of a few of these frontier basins onshore Brazil and their hydrocarbon potential.
Seismic exploration in some of these large basins has been hampered by their size, remoteness, and geological complexity. Meantime, the advances in the airborne prospecting technology, with the inclusion of gravity and gravity gradiometry, provide new and timely exploration tools.
Interpretation of airborne gravity and magnetic datasets is an effective way in understanding geology of such areas. These data are relatively inexpensive to collect, but they significantly contribute in delineating the basins and identifying the most adequate prospective areas. This study will present available geological cross-sections from the basins, which are analyzed by gravity and magnetic modeling. The modeling results clearly demonstrate applicability of these geophysical data for mapping basement geometry, intra-sedimentary igneous features, and sedimentary structures, which are key elements in building exploration framework for these frontier areas.
AAPG Search and Discover Article #90100©2009 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition 15-18 November 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil