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Abstract: Hydrocarbon Distribution in the Maracaibo Basin

Wolfgang Scherer

The prolific Maracaibo basin contains the second largest hydrocarbon accumulation in South America; it has been one of the principal oil producers of the world since the beginning of this century. Exploratory efforts in this basin, carried out with new techniques and new ideas, continue today, so it is of interest to determine the trends of hydrocarbon concentrations in terms of resources per unit volume of sediments and to correlate them to stratigraphic, sedimentary-tectonic and geochemical variables.

Regional scale maps representing the 24 principal geologic and geochemical variables that are thought to be a function of hydrocarbon generation, migration and accumulation were discretized on a 25 × 25 km grid. Variables used are isopach and Total Organic Carbon (TOC) of source rocks, isopach, sandstone content and grain size parameters of reservoir rocks, isopach of stratigraphic seal and overburden, maximum paleotemperatures (R0 and Tmax), tectonic energy (fault length and displacement) and hydrocarbon families. Multivariate analytical statistics was used to obtain the trends of hydrocarbon distributions.

The resulting hydrocarbon concentration trend map was quantitatively correlated to known hydrocarbon accumulations and prospective areas, where additional new accumulations might be found, were obtained. It can be shown that the largest known hydrocarbon concentrations correspond to areas of greatest cumulative overburden. The southern Zulia Catatumbo region is the largest prospective area determined by this method.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90951©1996 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Caracas, Venezuela