MEISNER, LEONID, and DMITRY TOUGOLESOV, NIPlokeangeofizika, Gelendzhik, Russia

Abstract: Structural Style, Geological Evolution of the Russian Black Sea and Its Hydrocarbon Potential

The Russian Black Sea area is divided into a shelf and a deep sea. The Caucasus shelf is composed by rocks ranging in age from Jurassic to Paleogene and having predominantly flysch alteration of beds. Gas fields onshore occur in the low part of Upper Cretaceous and in Low Cretaceous. On the shelf hydrocarbon pools are possible in the same units. Besides it is supposed that hydrocarbon pools are connected with the under-overthrust Oligocene-Neogene section within an upper part of a continental slope.

The Western Caucasus is surrounded by troughs, filled with Maikop shales. The shales are up to 5 kilometers thick and crumpled mostly into diapirs. Sedimentation was going in a deep water environment during the Maikop period. Then the Black Sea Basin gradually involved the Tuapse Trough and the Shatsky Ridge.

Oil and gas prospects are associated with the Miocene sequence in anticlinal traps of the Tuapse Trough.

The Shatsky Ridge is a huge high of the Mesozoic rock in a deep sea. It is expected that hydrocarbon fields will be found in the Upper Jurassic-Eocene traps. Numerous seismic anomalies of the "bright spot" type proving hydrocarbon gas presence in the geological section.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90923@1999 International Conference and Exhibition, Birmingham, England