Gravity-driven structures and rift basin evolution: Rio Muni Basin, offshore equatorial West Africa
- Univ. of Birmingham (United Kingdom)
Offshore Equatorial Guinea, west Africa, gravity-driven nappes, more than 1 km thick and 15 km from head to toe, provide key evidence in reconstructing the late synrift: evolution of this part of the South Atlantic margin basin system. Furthermore, Aptian-Cenomanian carbonate and clastic rocks in the nappes` allochthonous hanging walls are attracting interest as a new exploration play in west Africa. The nappes exhibit a range of geometries that suggest they share many of the same deformation processes as thin-skin thrust and linked extensional fault systems. Not only are these structures significant in their own right, representing a rare example of gravity tectonics in the virtual absence of major halokinesis, but their presence may record an other-wise undetectable process active during the transition from a rift basin to a passive continental margin. A review of Equatorial Guinea in its pre-Atlantic configuration, alongside neighboring basins in Brazil (the Sergipe-Alagoas basin) and Gabon, suggests that gravity gliding was sustained by a relatively steep, westward paleoslope promoted by east-ward offset of the locus of thermal uplift from the rift basin (i.e., a simple shear model of basin formation). In contrast to gravity-driven structures in most postrift settings, the Equatorial Guinea nappes developed at the close of the Aptian-Albian synrift episode in response to a growing bathymetric deep caused by rapid subsidence outpacing restricted sedimentation.
- OSTI ID:
- 127310
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950995--
- Journal Information:
- AAPG Bulletin, Journal Name: AAPG Bulletin Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 79; ISSN 0149-1423; ISSN AABUD2
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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