Regional paleogeographic evolution of West Africa: Implications for hydrocarbon exploration
- Shell Oil Co., Houston, TX (United States)
New paleogeographic reconstructions of west African continental margins provide a regional framework to contrast differences in hydrocarbon habitat and tectonostratigraphic style. The framework consists of five regional provinces: (1) northwest Africa margin from Mauritania to Sierra Leone, (2) transform margin from Libera to Benin, (3) Niger Delta of Nigeria, Cameroon, and equatorial Guinea, (4) South Atlantic Salt Basin margin from Cameroon to Angola, and (5) southwest Africa margin of Namibia and South Africa. Computer-constrained paleogeographic reconstructions based on exploration data depict the separation of west Africa from South and North America along three rift systems during the Late Triassic to the Holocene. In northwest Africa, rifting began in the Late Triassic associated with the opening of the central Atlantic. In southwest Africa, rifting began between the southern tips of Africa and South America in the Early Cretaceous and propagated northward to the Benue trough, a broad zone of left-lateral shear and extensional basins that began to open in the Aptian. Between these two rift systems, the transform margin rift system initiated in the Early Cretaceous (Barremian) as a wrench-fault-dominated eastward extension of the Proto-Caribbean ocean that propagated to the Benue trough by the middle Albian. The most important variables affecting the tectonostratigraphic and hydrocarbon evolution of the west African margins include (1) the geometry, kinematics, and duration of rifting, (2) distribution of rift basins relative to paleoclimate zones (which affects the deposition of lacustrine source rocks and evaporites while influencing the type and quantity of sediment derived from land), (3) sea level fluctuations, and (4) distribution of deltaic and turbiditic depocenters.
- OSTI ID:
- 5594456
- Journal Information:
- AAPG Bulletin (American Association of Petroleum Geologists); (United States), Vol. 77:11; ISSN 0149-1423
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Crustal structure and tectonic development of Gulf of Guinea Cul-deSac from integrated interpretation of new aeromagnetic and existing geophysical data
Rifting and early tectonic evolution of the equatorial Atlantic