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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 40 (1956)

Issue: 2. (February)

First Page: 432

Last Page: 433

Title: Fourth Dimension in Oil-Trap Analysis: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Robert H. Paschall

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

The time is past in which oil geologists needed prompting toward the search for stratigraphic as well as structural traps. However, the contemporary search for oil traps remains primarily a study in geometry. The prime requisite of a wildcat is that it be on a more or less provable closure, which may be either structural or stratigraphic in nature.

California, like many other oil-producing areas, has yielded a depressing collection of non-productive closures. It is evident that there must be a dimension, other than the three of geometry, which is critical in the formation of an oil-producing trap. It is suggested that the fourth dimension is one of time.

Field examples are afforded of two areas where presently mappable structural closures have been

End_Page 432------------------------------

found devoid of commercial oil accumulations. An analysis of the time-sequence of structural deformation indicates that the barren closures were formed after regional oil migration had passed their sites.

Palinspastic restorations of another area, in which wildcatting has failed to find production along a belt of major overlaps, place these overlaps in their proper perspective relative to geologic history.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists