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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
Abstract
AAPG Bulletin, V.
Segmentation of an obliquely rifted margin, Campos and Santos basins, southeastern Brazil
Kristian E. Meisling,1 Peter R. Cobbold,2 Van S. Mount3
1ARCO Exploration Technology and Operations, 2300 W. Plano Parkway, Plano, Texas, 75075; current address: BP America, Inc., 200 Westlake Park Blvd., Houston, Texas, 77079; email: [email protected]
2Geosciences-Rennes, 35042 RENNES Cedex, France; email: [email protected]
3ARCO Latin America, 2300 W. Plano Parkway, Plano, Texas, 75075; current address: Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, 17001 Northchase Drive, P.O. Box 1330, Houston, Texas, 77251; email: [email protected]
AUTHORS
Kristian Meisling earned his Ph.D. in geology from Caltech and his B.S. degree in engineering geology from UCLA. His 17-year career includes positions in research, applied technology, and exploration at ARCO, Mobil, and BP-Amoco. While at ARCO Kris was director of the Structural Geology Research Group. Kris has broad research interests, including strike- and oblique-slip structures, regional tectonics, syntectonic sedimentation, basin analysis, and paleogeographic reconstructions. He is currently in the Upstream Technology Group at BP America, Inc.
Peter Cobbold received his B.Sc. degree and Ph.D. in geology from Imperial College, London. After short periods as a lecturer at London and Leeds, he moved to Rennes, France. He now works as a research director for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and consults for the oil and mining industries. His research interests include structural geology, tectonics, and basin development. He has been active in analog modeling, palinspastic restoration, and field work, especially in South America and central Asia.
Van S. Mount received a Ph.D. in structural geology from Princeton University and a B.A. degree in geology from Hamilton College, New York. Van joined the Structural Geology Research Group at ARCO in 1989, where his work focused on quantitative analysis and interpretation of complexly deformed structures and regional structural syntheses. His exploration work at ARCO International concentrated on the Middle East and Latin America. Van is presently in the Basin Studies Group at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the management of ARCO Latin America and New Exploration Ventures, including Steve Sinclair, Dusty Marshall, and Jamie Robertson, for supporting our work and its release for publication. The gravity data set was provided by Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. Bouguer correction and filtering were carried out by Wayne Suyenaga at ARCO. We have benefitted greatly from discussions with colleagues on the Brazil Bid Round team at ARCO, including Chandra Suria, Christopher Legg, Stephen Scott, Stuart Gordon, Mike Crawford, Wayne Suyenaga, Zhiyong He, Ed Elliot, Lih Quo, Randy Roe, Steve Bergman, Mark Ward, and Brad Huizinga. We also thank those who contributed insights in previous years, including Bob Krantz, Lillian Flakes, and Claudio Bartolini. Robert Sprague, Jan-Nel Nye, and James Aston kindly provided graphics support. We are grateful to the reviewers, Ian Davison, Edison J. Milani, and Chris Morley, for their constructive comments. Finally, we thank the management of BP Trinidad Exploration and BP America, Inc. for supporting the publication of this article.
ABSTRACT
We make the case for Early Cretaceous transfer zones that segment the obliquely rifted Atlantic margin of southeastern Brazil. Our interpretation is based on published literature, Bouguer-corrected gravity, regional reflection seismic profiles, and well data. In the Santos and Campos basins, Neocomian rift architecture was strongly influenced by preexisting fabric and structures of the Late Proterozoic (Brasiliano orogeny). The Atlantic margin inherited an east-northeast-west-southwest orientation so that rifting was oblique to the margin.
On a regional map of Bouguer-corrected gravity, a nearshore belt of positive anomalies correlates with an interpreted broad Moho uplift in the footwall of Neocomian extensional faults. Farther offshore, a second belt of positive anomalies correlates with a presalt ridge of eroded volcanic or basement anticlines covered by thin Aptian evaporites, interpreted as a failed spreading center. Intervening negative anomalies coincide with the main rift basin. All three belts show apparent offsets along linear zones trending west-northwest-east-southeast, which we interpret as transfer zones. The vergence of half rifts tends to change across transfer zones, compartmentalizing the rifted margin into subbasins.
Our results have implications for the risks associated with distribution, maturation, and migration of hydrocarbons within the prolific Early Cretaceous lacustrine petroleum system of the Campos and Santos basins.
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