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Abstract


 
Chapter from: M 62:Petroleum Basins of South America 
Edited by 
A. J. Tankard, R. Suarez Soruco, and H. J. Welsink

Basin and Aerial Analysis/Evaluation


 


Published 1995 as part of Memoir 62
Copyright © 1995 The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.  All Rights Reserved.

 


 
About the Editors
Anthony Tankard is a principal of Tankard Enterprises, a Calgary-based company. A native of South Africa, he received B.Sc. (Honours) and Ph.D. degrees from Natal University and Rhodes University, respectively. Since 1970, he worked in research institutions in South Africa and the United States before entering the Canadian petroleum industry in 1981. Tony established Tankard Enterprises in 1992. His work includes basin evolution, stratigraphy, the way sedimentation responds to structural development, and the habitat of hydrocarbon accumulation. He is actively involved in AAPG affairs and has published numerous technical papers in addition to co-editing or co-authoring several volumes.
 
 
 
 

 

Ramiro Suárez Soruco is a senior technical specialist at Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos, the Bolivian national oil company. Ramiro was born in Cochabamba in the Andes. He completed his undergraduate training at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and his Doctorate in geology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, both in Argentina. Since 1968, his career has spanned GEOBOL and YPFB as paleontologist, biostratigrapher, and technical services manager. Ramiro's research interests have focused on invertebrate paleontology and Paleozoic biostratigraphy and paleogeography, subjects in which he has published many papers. Through this work, he has been involved in several national and international committees, including the IUGS Subcommission on Devonian Stratigraphy and the Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia.
 
 
 
 

 

Herman Welsink is a senior geologist in the exploration department of Compañía Naviera Perez Companc S.A.C.F.I.M.F.A. in Neuquén, Argentina. He was born in Haarlem, The Netherlands. He graduated with a Doctoraal in geology from the University of Utrecht; this work included a thesis on an Eocene basin in the Pyrenees. Since 1981, Herman has worked in the oil industry, where he has been involved in exploration principally of extensional basins in Canada, Bolivia, and Argentina. His research interests and publications center on the formation and deformation of sedimentary basins, structural-stratigraphic linkage, and their consequences for hydrocarbon accumulation.
iii

 

PGIV
JUAN KEIDEL (1877-1954)

Geologist, teacher, and explorer.
 
 

Jeremy Tankard, 1994, watercolor, gouache, ink and charcoal, 38 X 41 cm


 
Dedication





Before plate tectonics, there was continental drift, a concept pioneered largely by Alfred Wegener. He showed that the geometric reconstruction of the supercontinents was more than the fortuitous parallelism of the coasts on either side of the Atlantic. He also explained in an elegant way the distribution of mountain belts, stratigraphy, and middle Paleozoic ice age deposits.

The reaction to these ideas was lukewarm at best in Europe and decidedly hostile in North America. The geologists of southern Africa and South America were, however, more enthusiastic. Prominent among these were Alex du Toit of South Africa and Juan Keidel of Argentina.

Juan Keidel provided some of the supporting evidence for the contiguity of Africa and South America within Paleozoic Gondwana. His contributions are acknowledged by Wegener in his classic book Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (1915). Keidel demonstrated the relationships between the Carboniferous-Permian Sauce Grande glacial deposits of Argentina and the Dwyka tillites of South Africa, as well as the nature of their encapsulating stratigraphies. Only in a reconstructed Gondwana did these glaciers have a rational distribution. The apparent continuity of the Cape fold belt and the Sierra de la Ventana was noted. In his seminal paper of 1921, Keidel recognized how widespread this Permian-Triassic deformation really was, forming a series of cordilleras from Ventana to the Andean foothills. To describe these ancient cordilleras, he coined the name Gondwanides. These interpretations were supported by field work on the Ventana System in the province of Buenos Aires and by surveys in the western and northern Precordillera of Mendoza and San Juan. This was also the start of his association with Alex du Toit, who visited Argentina in the early 1920s.

Field expeditions took Keidel to the Andes, Patagonia, and Neuquén. In the Neuquén basin, he was involved with the first oil well.

Juan Keidel was born in Gross Stoeckheim, Germany, in 1877. He studied at the Institute of Mining in Berlin and completed a doctorate at Freiburg under Professor Steinmann. Dr. Keidel was appointed the first head of what was to become the Geological Survey of Argentina. Subsequently, he taught geology at the University of Buenos Aires. Keidel published more than 50 papers in an illustrious career.

We dedicate this book, Petroleum Basins of South America, to the memory of Juan Keidel.

 

v
Preface





This memoir addresses the geology and dynamics of the principal petroleum basins of South America from Venezuela to Argentina. Our understanding of the way these sedimentary basins formed has advanced immensely in the last decade. This reflects improved data quality, a different way of looking at the data, a new integrated approach to basin analysis, and a new generation of geologists. A wide variety of papers reviews the tectonic framework, comparative structural styles, sequence stratigraphy, and the way these are interrelated. These basins were a long time in the making. Most have evolved by repeated reactivation of preexisting fabrics. The structural development, its timing, and the way sedimentation responded to this activity is of paramount importance to oil and gas exploration. Intentionally we do not review in any detail the Mesozoic basins of the Atlantic margin because a subject so vast would require space of its own.

We are grateful to the following people for their generous assistance in many ways, for being there when we needed them: Peter Aukes, Hugo Belotti, Nora Cesaretti, Miguel Cirbián, Al Ferworn, Silvia González, Gary Howell, Bob Meneley, Luis Spalletti and Graciela Suárez Marzal de Spalletti, Anne Thomas, Gustavo Vergani, and members of the AAPG staff. We thank Edgar Ortiz and Jeremy Tankard for the paintings prepared especially for this volume. Copyediting and layout were done by Kathy Walker. We are also grateful to Perez Companc for its support.

 

xi
xii       Preface
All of the manuscripts were reviewed externally. We would like to thank the following for their critical reviews:
J. Allan
R. B. Allen
R. W. Allmendinger
H. Arbe
C. D. Arregui
P. G. Aukes
H. R. Balkwill
C. Barcat
H. Belotti
K. T. Biddle
A. Boll
G. C. Bond
A. J. Boucot
R. L. Brown
K. R. Butler
R. Caminos
M. A. Cooper
M. C. Covey
L. Dalla Salda
M. J. de Wit
J. F. Dunn
A. Edwards
R. N. Erlich
N. Eyles
R. D. Forsythe
J. Gallagher
C. F. Garrasino
S. Greer
R. H. Groshong
N. E. Haimila
P. E. Isaacson
M. P. A. Jackson
W. R. Jamison
W. A. M. Jenkins
P. B. Jones
T. E. Jordan
J. W. Kerr
E. Kozlowski
C. Knutson
G. E. Kronman
D. Larue
L. Legarreta
D. A. Lehto
J. Letouzey
S. Liu
O. López Gamundi
O. López Paulsen
D. Loureiro
J. D. Lowell
J. A. Maloney
P. Mann
R. Manoni
J. R. McLean
R. A. Meneley
E. J. Milani
M. Mozetic
A. C. Newson
H. Passalacqua
M. J. Perkins
J. L. Pindell
V. Ploszkiewicz
V. A. Ramos
J. Reynolds
G. Rodrigue
D. Roeder
F. Roure
D. B. Rowley
F. Schein
D. W. Scholl
T. Sempere
B. M. Sheffels
A. E. Slingsby
L. R. Snowdon
C. R. Tippett
M. A. Uliana
J. Utting
B. van Hoorn
G. Vergani
J. N. J. Visser
C. Vistalli
H. J. Welsink
H. J. White
P. A. Ziegler
N. Zilli
This memoir was stimulated by a meeting on Gondwana geology held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in August 1992. Financial support was provided by Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, Phillips Petroleum, Tesoro Bolivia Petroleum, Perez Companc, Mobil Boliviana Petroleum, Chevron International (Bolivia), Exxon Company, and Texaco Bolivia.
 
 

Anthony Tankard

Ramiro Suárez Soruco

Herman Welsink

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