West Africa Lacustrine Pre-salt Carbonates: How Interaction of Tectonics and Diagenesis Produced Different Reservoir Facies

Abstract

During the Early Cretaceous South-Atlantic opening, in large lacustrine basins a series of shallow water carbonate platforms grew along lake margins and paleo-highs. These carbonates are giant reservoirs in the Brasil offshore, while in Angola are productive in Cabinda (Lower Congo Basin) and are being explored in the Kwanza Basin with minor success. These carbonates have peculiar facies associations represented mainly by microbialites and coquinas, and are affected by dolomitization which modified the original pore system in different ways. In presence of deep-seated extensional faults, bounding the paleo-highs, the hydrothermal dolomitization affected the reservoir carbonate improving its quality; in fact the hydrothermal dolomite produced the so-called zebra dolomite which is characterized by high porosity and permeability. On the other hand, when there is a limited influx of hydrothermal fluid, some dolomitization is observed, but it did not produce the zebra facies and the poro-perm system has lower quality. These two examples suggest that the understanding of the distribution of deep faults may help in the prediction of the diagenetic effects and resulting reservoir properties.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90267 ©2016 AAPG/SPE Africa Energy and Technology Conference, Nairobi City, Kenya, December 5-7, 2016