Pre-salt Petroleum Systems of the Gulf of Mexico: Insights from Global Analogs

Abstract

The Middle Jurassic and older sedimentary section preserved beneath the autochthonous ‘mother’ salt in the Gulf of Mexico Basin remains largely unexplored despite extensive seismic evidence of large-scale wedges that have been interpreted as rift basins. These features have been documented in the northern and eastern U.S. margins (Salvador, 1991; Pindell et al., 2011), in eastern Mexico and offshore Yucatan (Miranda-Peralta et al., 2014; Goswami et al., 2016; Horn et al., 2017; Hudec and Norton, 2018), and in northern Cuba (Moretti et al., 2003). However, published data and knowledge of petroleum systems within these basins is still inadequate for assessing their potential resources. One approach to dealing with this scarcity of data is to extract it from discovered fields in other basins of the world. The first step is usually to examine world-class pre-salt discoveries such as those found in the South Atlantic conjugate margins (Brazil, Angola, Congo, and Gabon). However, the information obtained from these regions is limited to their unique geological context and is probably biased towards the high end of a statistical distribution of petroleum system parameters. Therefore, the next logical step would be to examine parameters obtained from a broader range of global examples.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90369 © 2020 AAPG Hedberg Conference, Geology and Hydrocarbon Potential of the Circum-Gulf of Mexico Pre-salt Section, Mexico City, Mexico, February 4-6, 2020