Journal of Petroleum Geology, Vol.16,
No.1, pp. 5-32, 1993
©Copyright 2000 Scientific Press,
Ltd.
THE TALARA FOREARC BASIN, NW
PERU: DEPOSITIONAL MODELS
OF OIL-PRODUCING CENOZOIC CLASTIC SYSTEMS
A. V. Carozzi* and J. R. Palomino**
* Department of Geology, 245
Natural History Building, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 1301 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois,
61801-2999, USA.
** J. R. Butler and Co., Oil and
Gas Consultants, 4605 Post Oak Place, Houston, Texas 77027, USA.
Abstract
The Talara Basin is an unusual forearc
basin, inasmuch as it displays many features which are not
characteristic of such a tectonic context. These features
apparently result from the basin's location at the intersection
of the Amazonas Aulacogen, the Andean orogenic belt, and the
subduction zone of the Peru-Chile Trench. The history of the
Talara forearc basin is dominated by extensional rather than
compressional tectonic activity, which reached a peak after the
Eocene in association with low-angle gravity slides. This
tectonism began with a prolonged synsedimentary phase, which,
during the Paleocene-Eocene, generated a complex system of horsts
and grabens bounded by major high-angle normal faults trending
NE-SW and NW-SE. Closely related to repeated phases of uplift and
erosion in the eastern Andean source areas, this structural
pattern controlled unusually thick and coarse clastic
sedimentation during the Paleocene-Eocene; a thickness of about
22,000 ft has been preserved, from which volcanics are
essentially absent.