This presentation uses a regional prospectivity assessment of the Greater Adriatic region to illustrate how the forensic review, re-assessment and re-interpretation of a suite of historical geoscience databases can lead to the identification of new play elements and petroleum systems in an established hydrocarbon province.
This presentation uses a regional prospectivity assessment of the Greater Adriatic region to illustrate how the forensic review, re-assessment and re-interpretation of a suite of historical geoscience databases can lead to the identification of new play elements and petroleum systems in an established hydrocarbon province.
The area of interest is located on the European Plate and has undergone a complex tectonic evolution which commenced with regional Mesozoic Tethyan extension and culminated in compression associated with the collision of Africa and Eurasia which led to the Tertiary Alpine orogeny. This region, which extends from eastern Italy to the Balkans, is a proven hydrocarbon province of historical importance that contains some of the largest onshore oil fields in Europe, such as the Val D’Agri field in the southern Apennines and the Patos-Marinza field in Albania.
Re-mapping of the basin architecture provided new insights into the nature and timing of the structural evolution and sedimentary fill of the region. A re-interpretation of the available hydrocarbon occurrence and geochemical database led to the division of the region into a suite of play domains. Thrust geometries and the position of the basal decollement were shown to exert a first order control on charge access. Reservoirs consist mainly of Triassic to Paleogene platformal to basinal carbonates and Oligocene to Pleistocene siliciclastics. Within the fold and thrust belt significant effective porosity is associated with the presence of pervasive fracture networks. The region shows a wide range of trapping geometries including both structural and stratigraphic trapping configurations. Regionally mappable first order unconformities control in large part the distribution of sealing sequences. By using a play based, multi-disciplinary approach these new analyses were convolved to identify additional potential in both new and established plays in the region.
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