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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

GCAGS Transactions

Abstract


Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions
Vol. 46 (1996), Pages 484-484

Abstract: Petroleum System Evolution in the Conecuh Embayment, Southwest Alabama, U.S. Gulf Coast

William J. Wade

ABSTRACT

Analyses of hydrocarbon maturation trends in Smackover reservoirs of southwest Alabama indicate that crude oils in updip reservoirs of the Conecuh Embayment are anomalously mature for their present temperature-depth regimes. It is inferred that these mature oils equilibrated to depth-temperature conditions in deeper reservoirs downdip, and subsequently re-migrated to their present positions. Burial history reconstructions, regional structure, and reservoir distributions support a model in which these mature oils leaked from the Jay-Flomaton-Big Escambia Creek field complex during Tertiary time, migrated through the Norphlet Formation, and accumulated in updip Smackover and Haynesville traps associated with basement knobs.

Geochemical evidence suggests that hydrocarbon leakage from the Jay-Flomaton-Big Escambia Creek complex may have been triggered by an influx of very mature gas-condensates with high non-hydrocarbon gas contents from failed reservoirs still farther downdip. This scenario has potential implications for 1) predicting potential migration pathways and preferred areas of crude oil accumulation in the updip portion of the Conecuh Embayment, and 2) re-interpreting organic-inorganic burial diagenetic reactions in Norphlet Formation reservoirs of offshore Mobile Bay.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND ASSOCIATED FOOTNOTES

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Copyright © 1999 by The Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies