Hydrocarbon potential of the Ural\u2013African transcontinental oil and gas belt

Abstract

Recently, several major hydrocarbon fields have been discovered in the Ural–African transcontinental oil and gas belt. These include the Pobeda field in the Kara Sea (338 billion m3 of gas, >100 million tons of oil), the Velikoe field in the Astrakhan region (90 billion m3 of gas, 300 million tons of oil), and the Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan (the world’s second largest, after North Dome). There have also been a number of oil and gas finds in East Africa. All of those corroborate the idea of the Ural–African transcontinental oil and gas belt being a planetary structure hosting unique hydrocarbon concentrations. Analysis of the belt’s metallogeny shows that large and super-large deposits of metallic and nonmetallic minerals are concentrated in an axial zone, highlighting the large-scale redistribution of energy and matter in the Earth’s crust and mantle. These processes are most active in the rift structure where they come together to form the Ural–African transcontinental oil and gas belt. The process that formed the recently identified hydrocarbon deposits within the modern rift structure—the East African Rift system—can be seen as an embryonic stage in formation of oil–gas accumulations. The East African Rift petroleum discoveries are characterized by the continuous flow of hydrocarbons and its short-term residence in local traps. This makes finding major hydrocarbon deposits there unlikely. The potential for large deposits is more likely where large accumulations of hydrocarbons are overlapped by later sedimentary strata, a situation seen offshore of East Africa.