New Insights into Egypt's Mediterranean Sea: An Exploration Opportunity

Abstract

Despite lying in the neighbourhood of one of the most prolific petroleum provinces of Africa, Egypt’s West Mediterranean Sea has seen exploration efforts limited by a lack of data and clarity of license block delineation. Recently acquired 12km long offset GeoStreamer® seismic data (2016), together with anticipated licence round activities has suddenly thrust this area to the forefront of oil companies exploration plans in 2019. To compliment future exploration an additional 12km long offset GeoStreamer® seismic survey was acquired in 2018, thus increasing the seismic database across the region. Gravity and magnetic data was also acquired simultaneously during the 2016 and 2018 GeoStreamer® seismic campaigns. This dataset has given new insights into the regional geology and the associated hydrocarbon potential across the different geological domains throughout Egypt’s Mediterranean Sea. In addition two separate 3D surveys have been reprocessed (2018), significant uplift is observed. This has provided additional detail and insights across the shelf and basinal geological domains within the frontier West Mediterranean Sea. In total, close to 30,000 line km of 2D GeoStreamer® data has been acquired across two acquisition campaigns (2016 & 2018), just over 10,000 line km of vintage 2D and 6,000 sq.km of vintage 3D data has been reprocessed (2016 & 2018 respectively) across Egypt’s Mediterranean Sea. Previous seismic interpretation and basin modelling has indicated that several source rocks could have generated and expelled hydrocarbons (notably Oligo-Miocene biogenic gas and Early Cretaceous-Eocene source rocks). Anticipated reservoir intervals include Pliocene, Oligo-Miocene, Cretaceous and Jurassic aged units. Reservoirs intervals are assumed to be clastic formations across the shelf, basin and Nile Delta (pre & post salt) and Mesozoic aged platform carbonates across the shelf and younger, potentially salt sealing carbonate build up structures towards the shelf edge/transform margin. This data will be vital when for all interested companies that wish to evaluate the area during the upcoming West Egypt Licensing Round. It will provide valuable insights and ultimately help with the regional geological understanding and the prospectivity that may exist across this underexplored region.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90355 © 2019 AAPG Africa Region, The Eastern Mediterranean Mega-Basin: New Data, New Ideas and New Opportunities, Alexandra, Egypt, September 6-7, 2019