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

CARLOS M. URIEN, Consultant, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract: Meridional South America Petroleum Provinces Present And Future

Forty-two sedimentary basins ranging from Intraplate non-orogenic type to Plate margin with orogeny are found in Meridional South America. Only seven of these basins produce commercial oil and gas, six of them are in the foreland-folded trend, that is the "Sub-Andean Belt" and one intracratonic, located in the Patagonian platform.

In most of these basins commercial production began in the early part of the century. Since then, exploration and development work has been mostly concentrated in those areas with established productive plays, postponing exploration efforts in the rest of the region.

Regional surveys have detected potential petroleum systems in more than one third of the non-producing basins, moreover, in those with existing production there are still under-explored frontier areas waiting to be tested by the drill.

In this context we can define three types of areas with exploration potential: 1) basins that are yet to be explored by the drill, 2) non productive basins insufficiently explored, and 3) plays in producing basins that are not yet tested.

It is a fact that new ideas and technologies supplemented by integrated basin studies open up new exploration frontiers. The global geological vision, where the knowledge of analogies, widens and stimulates the exploring mind, aided by advances in technology and new market demands, encourages the attempt to carry out further exploration work in these frontier areas.

Giant fields continue to be discovered in these relegated provinces such as the intracratonic rifts, fold belts and subtle stratigraphic traps. This same concept can be applied to the exploration challenge of the virtually untested South Atlantic margin.

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