Prospectivity of the Southern European Atlantic Margin

Abstract

The offshore European Atlantic Margin was predominantly explored during the 1970s and 80s. Even though a number of hydrocarbon accumulations were discovered and many oil and gas shows observed in wells, few proved to be commercial at that time. This is at odds with the conjugate Canadian basins that have enjoyed success since the beginnings of exploration in the 60s and 70s. Greatly increased image quality provided by new reprocessing of legacy seismic datasets by CGG allows the opportunity to re-evaluate the results of the shelfal exploration and apply new exploration concepts to understanding petroleum prospectivity of the undrilled deeper water area. The latter is revealed to be geologically simpler than the sometimes complex shallow water, with associated increases in the petroleum prospectivity. Moreover, the presence of regional, effective, oil and gas prone Jurassic source rocks indicates the whole margin, particularly the deep water, is a potentially prospective, underexplored province. (Go to www.searchanddiscovery.com to see figures.)

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90226 © 2015 European Regional Conference and Exhibition, Lisbon, Portugal, May 18-19, 2015