Evolution of the Northeastern Arabian Plate Margin and Shelf: Hydrocarbon Habitat and Conceptual Future Potential

Abstract

About 98% of the huge recoverable hydrocarbon reserves of the Arabian Plate are concentrated in the Northeastern Margin Shelf extending from NW Iraq through the Gulf to Central Oman. The plate tectonic evolution of this region is reviewed as background for its enormous hydrocarbon productivity. This is intimately linked to a near-continuous passive margin history and gentle subsidence of an extraordinarily wide epeiric shelf, which allowed repeated regional development of source rocks in large intra-shelf basins frequently in optimal juxtapositional relationships with good regional reservoirs and seals; these events are discussed. Although currently reported reserve figures relate to Mesozoic and Tertiary reservoirs, it is concluded that several pre-Mesozoic regional sources have generated enormous volumes of hydrocarbons, the bulk of which still await discovery in up-dip Paleozoic reservoirs, and that future ultimate recoverable reserves could conceivably double.