Fractured, reservoir limestones in Oman and the United Arab Emirates include the Shuaiba (lower Aptian) and Mauddud (upper Aptian-lower Cenomanian). Deposition of these bioturbated, argillaceous foraminiferal-peloidal wackestones and packstones ceased in the Early Cretaceous as the Oman foredeep subsided and filled with pelagic sediment. Petrography and geohistory analysis of four wells and one outcrop suite reveals five stages of diagenesis, fracturing, and fluid migration. (1) Shelf emergence: early cementation associated with regional unconformities overlying both limestones; (2) pre-orogenic shelf emergence, late Cenomanian to Turonian: fractures cutting Stage 1 cements are healed by very cloudy, cleaved, and twinned calcite containing microfractures with yellow-white fluorescent, hydrocarbon fluid inclusions; (3) initial foredeep downwarp of 0 to 800 m (0 to 2,624 ft), Coniacian to early Campanian: fractures crosscutting Stage 2 fractures are healed with cloudy, cleaved, and sometimes twinned calcite containing dull-blue fluorescent, hydrocarbon fluid inclusions; (4) rapid subsidence and filling with 600 to 3,400 m (1,970 to 11,155 ft) of flysch, exotic blocks, and thrust toes, Campanian to Maestrichtian: burial and tectonic stylolites crosscut Stage 2 and 3 fractures; and (5) uplift of the Oman Mountains after 3,900 + m (12,795 + ft) burial by early Tertiary: fractures crosscutting all diagenetic features are filled with clear untwinned and uncleaved calcite containing only non-fluorescent, aqueous fluid inclusions. If we can correlate earliest styl lite formation with a minimum burial load of ~ 800 m (~ 2,625 ft), then the hydrocarbon inclusions in Stage 2 fractures must predate all of Stage 4 and most of Stage 3. In the deepest portions of the foredeep, close to the Oman Mountain front, this limits the presence of oil in fracture porosity to late Turonian-early Campanian time. Farther to the west, in the shallower parts of the foredeep, this constraint relaxes, and oil migration occurred as late as early Tertiary.

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