Print this pageABSTRACT: Petroleum Potential of the Reggane Basin, Algeria
A. Boudjema, M. Hamel, A. Mohamedi, R. Lounissi
The intracratonic Reggane basin is located on the Saharan platform, southwest of Algeria. The basin covers an area of approximately 140000 km2, extending between the Eglab shield in the south and the Ougarta ranges in the north.
Although exploration started in the early 1950s, only a few wells were drilled in this basin. Gas was discovered with a number of oil shows.
The sedimentary fill, mainly Paleozoic shales and sandstones, has a thickness exceeding 5000 m in the central part of the basin. The reservoirs are Cambrian-Ordovician, Siegenian, Emsian, Tournaisian, and Visean sandstones with prospective petrophysical characteristics. Silurian, Upper Devonian, and, to a lesser extent, Carboniferous shales are the main source rocks.
An integrated study was done to assess the hydrocarbon potential of this basin. Tectonic evolution, source rocks and reservoirs distribution, maturation analyses followed by kinetic modeling, and hydrogeological conditions were studied. Results indicate that gas accumulations could be expected in the central and deeper part of the basin, and oil reservoirs could be discovered on the basin edge.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91003©1990 AAPG Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, June 3-6, 1990