Abstract

This chapter focuses on a structurally complex area, the southern Gulf of Paria, which straddles the boundary between eastern Venezuela and Trinidad. Using a combined seismic and well data set crossing the political border between Trinidad and Venezuela, the objective of this work is to provide an overview of the structural provinces present in the study area and to describe how they control the different tectono-sequences in the subsurface, the timing of events, and ultimately the implications for the petroleum systems. Five structural provinces were defined based on the main structural elements and tectonic setting: eastern Venezuela passive margin, southeast-directed fold-and-thrust belt (FTB), lateral ramp, pull-apart (PA) basin, and north-directed FTB. Four main tectono-sequences were interpreted and mapped from Cretaceous to present. Because of data quality and structural complexity, the oldest sequences are difficult to map, and interpretations are of higher uncertainty in the PA province (northern part especially) and the highly deformed areas of the FTB provinces. Regarding petroleum systems, conceptual models of the dominant trapping styles in relation to structural provinces are presented.