AAPG FOUNDATION PRATT CONFERENCE: PETROLEUM PROVINCES, 21st CENTURY
January 12-15, 2000
San Diego, California

MELLO, M. R., Petrobras, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; R. MOFFMAN, Consultant, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and S. R. P. SILVA, R. R. MACIEL, and F. P. MIRANDA, Petrobras, Brazil

Abstract: Foz do Amazonas Area: The Last Frontier for Elephants Hydrocarbon Accumulations in the South Atlantic Realm

In most areas of the South Atlantic, exploration is far from being mature since offshore ultra deep-water exploration has just begun. Geochemical data suggest that similar oil types are found across the South Atlantic petroleum provinces, allowing the application of a unified model for hydrocarbon provenance in counterpart basins. Such oil type similarities, when interpreted in paleogeographic context, can help reveal details of unexplored petroleum systems.

In a petroleum system context, the integration of geochemical and geological data of oil, gas and source rock samples from Foz do Amazonas, Brazil and Ivory Coast and Niger Delta, West Africa, has allowed the correlation and characterization of similar multiple oil and gas types.

This study, based in a integrated multidisciplinary approach and using technologies ranging from remote sensing to molecular geochemistry, suggests the Foz do Amazonas area, after Campos basin, is the most important oil/ gas-prone province in the Brazilian marginal basins. Throughout the tectonic-stratigraphic framework, regional facies variations of Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary source rocks are consistent with a marine carbonate and marine deltaic model for source rock deposition. The origin of the hydrocarbons is related to Upper Cretaceous anoxic global events, and a huge fluvial marine deltaic complex that formed during the Oligocene/Miocene. 

©Copyright 1999.  The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.  All Rights Reserved

M. R. MELLO, R. MOSSMAN, S. R. P. SILVA, R. R. MACIEL and F. P. MIRANDA