Online Journal for E&P Geoscientists

Doornenbal, Hans ¹; Abdul Fattah, Rader ^*1; Moscariello, Andrea ¹
(1) TNO, Utrecht, Netherlands.

The North African Petroleum Geological Atlas (NAPGA) will give easy and inexpensive access to the accumulated knowledge held by several organizations on the basins of the area. A comprehensive and systematic overview of the results of over 100 years of petroleum exploration and research in the North African region, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt will be published both in paper and digital (GIS) format.

The NAPGA project (2012- 2016) is a joint project of the National Oil Companies in North Africa and the Geological Surveys of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The Atlas aims to stimulate the petroleum E&P industry to continue their activities in the region by cooperation between (national and international) Oil Companies, universities and research institutes. The project will assist in training petroleum geologists employed in the North African region.

The Atlas will address the geological evolution and hydrocarbon potential for each stratigraphic interval. The paleogeographic and tectonic evolution will be described within the framework of the principal stratigraphic intervals, from the Neoproterozoic basement to the Holocene. The structural and stratigraphic settings will be elucidated by a detailed set of field examples, overview maps and illustrations. Petroleum generation, migration, trapping and production, as well as the history of exploration and licensing in the North African region, will be covered, together with a summary of resource assessments.

The Atlas will be available on printed paper (A2 size) and on DVD in an interactive PDF format. All attribute data and spatial data (rasters and vectors) will be offered digitally on a DVD. The GIS will be developed for viewing spatial and attribute (tabular) data such as depth maps, well attributes and oil and gas field attributes. It will also enable user-defined web-based access to the Atlas content and hence provide an invaluable training tool for researchers.

The NAPGA project is a follow up of the Millennium Atlas (2003) and the Petroleum Geological Atlas of the Southern Permian Basin area (SPBA) (2010). A similar concept can be applied in other areas, e.g. the Middle East.