Halite Deposits of the Cenozoic and Mesozoic of the Arabian Plate

G.J. Grabowski¹, P.C. Tai¹, and W.B. Maze ¹

Abstract

Evaporites formed at many times on the Arabian Plate. Many include halite, with only minor occurrences of bittern salts.

The major halite deposits occur in the Upper Triassic (Arabian Platform), Lower and Upper Jurassic (Arabian Platform, Gotnia Basin, and Marib-Jawf Graben), and Oligocene-Miocene (Red Sea, Mesopotamian Basin, Zagros Foldbelt, and Southern Gulf Salt Basin). The halite is many 100’s of meters thick and occurs as late syntectonic deposits in extensional grabens in Yemen and the Red Sea, where multiple evaporite intervals, 10’s to 100’s of meters thick, are separated by dominantly siliciclastic deposits. Similarly thick evaporite packages separated by argillaceous and calcareous sedimentary rocks also formed in the relatively deep Gotnia and Mesopotamian basins, which were not active rift basins at the time of salt deposition. Widespread halite-bearing evaporites that are only 10’s of meters thick occur in varying locations and times on the Arabian Plate and are related to depositional topography and intra-platform basins during tectonically "quiet" times.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90188 ©GEO-2014, 11th Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition, 10-12 March 2014, Manama, Bahrain