ABSTRACT: Global Petroleum Occurrences in Submarine Fans and Turbidite Systems

Paul Weimer, Martin H. Link

Submarine fans and turbidite systems are major petroleum reservoirs in many sedimentary basins in the world. We have identified 60 sedimentary basins that contain major petroleum-producing submarine-fan deposits. These reservoirs produce from structural, stratigraphic, and combined traps. To characterize these reservoir occurrences, tables were compiled for each continent by basin, listing tectonic setting, reservoir age, formation name, reservoir characteristics, and type of trap.

Synrift settings contain both lacustrine and marine turbidite reservoirs. Major synrift lacustrine turbidite reservoirs occur in Tertiary basins in China and Hungary and in the Lower Cretaceous basins of Brazil and western Africa. Synrift marine turbidite reservoirs are best developed in the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous of the North Sea. The Paleogene postrift sag basins of the North Sea also contain major turbidite reservoirs and are mainly compactional features over older structures and updip stratigraphic traps.

Passive margins contain turbidite reservoirs in a variety of structural

styles. Salt- and growth fault-influenced basins include the Neogene of the U.S. Gulf Coast and the giant oil fields of the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary of Brazil. Reservoirs associated with shale diapirs occur in the Tertiary strata of the Canadian Beaufort Sea and along the Niger continental margin. Fore-arc basins with turbidite reservoirs include the Upper Cretaceous-Eocene of the Sacramento basin (California) and Tertiary basins of the western Pacific Ocean. Foreland basin turbidites are most productive in the Neogene Italian Appennines and in the Permian of west Texas. The wrench and successor basins associated with the Neogene transform margins of California include the giant oil fields of the Miocene San Joaquin, Pliocene Ventura, and Miocene-Pliocene Los Angeles basins.

Submarine canyons form in all of these tectonic settings and have two kinds of reservoirs: canyon fill and truncated strata against the canyon walls. Producing reservoirs from canyons include the Eocene of Texas, Paleocene-Eocene of the Sacramento basin (California), Upper Cretaceous and Eocene of offshore Brazil, and Eocene of Mexico. Carbonate slope and basin debris-flow reservoirs include the Miocene of the Philippines, Cretaceous and Paleocene of Mexico, Permian of west Texas, and Devonian of western Canada.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91003©1990 AAPG Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, June 3-6, 1990