Petroleum prospects of Southern Nigeria's Anambra Basin
Surrounded by the Benue trough, the Middle Niger River depression, the Niger River delta, and the Abakaliki anticlinorium, Nigeria's Anambra basin probably holds a thick, unexplored sequence with significant hydrocarbon potential. The basin's sediment could be 16,000 ft thick; a Bouguer gravity survey indicates two parallel northeast-southwest trending gravity lows (the Anambra low and the Awka depression) separated by the Onitsha high. Although geologists interpret the basin as Upper Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary, its southern portion is down-warped and overlapped by the delta's thick Tertiary deposits, lowering the Cretaceous to prohibitive depths in the overlap areas; wells drilled to 16,000 ft at the delta's apex thus have not encountered the Cretaceous sediments. An evaluation of the basin's pre-Santonian hydrocarbon prospects will require a deep exploratory drilling program. As Nigeria shifts its production emphasis from oil to gas and firms up plans for an LNG plant in the Niger delta, exploration in the gas-prone Anambra basin will probably surge.
- Research Organization:
- Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
- OSTI ID:
- 5836405
- Journal Information:
- Oil Gas J.; (United States), Vol. 79
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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