Tengiz field is an isolated carbonate buildup in the southeastern Precaspian Basin, containing a succession of shallow-water platforms ranging in age from late Famennian to early Bashkirian. Platform backstepping from Tournaisian through late Visean resulted in approximately 800 m (2625 ft) of bathymetric relief above the Famennian platform. This was followed by as much as 2 km (1.2 mi) of Serpukhovian progradation, which formed a depositional wedge around the older platforms referred to as the Serpukhovian rim and flank.

Rim and flank facies include lower slope mudstone, volcanic ash, and platform-derived skeletal packstone to grainstone interbedded with boundstone breccia; middle-slope poorly bedded to massive boundstone breccia with subtypes based on clast composition, size, and packing; upper-slope in-situ microbial boundstone; and outer-platform to shallow-platform skeletal, coated-grain, and ooid packstone to grainstone. The upper-slope microbial boundstone represents the dominant source of clasts in the middle- and lower-slope breccias. Periodic large-scale failure of the rim during both Serpukhovian and Bashkirian time resulted in a high degree of lateral facies discontinuity.

Solution-enlarged fractures, large vugs, and lost circulation zones produced mainly during late diagenesis form a high-permeability, well-connected reservoir in the rim and flank. This diagenetic overprint is associated with the presence of bitumen and extends upward into overlying Serpukhovian and Bashkirian platform facies and inward into adjacent late Visean platforms, where it has substantially altered reservoir properties that remained after early diagenesis related to cyclic depositional processes.