Jurassic Hydrocarbon Exploration of Southern Florida: ABSTRACT

Abstract

South Florida Jurassic exploration has been overlooked as a viable exploration target due to lack of data and plate-tectonics application. In Florida, {open_quotes}basement{close_quotes} is defined as crystalline, igneous, metamorphic, and unmetamorphosed sediments of Paleozoic age. Age-dating of zircons has proven that the Florida lower Paleozoic terrane is not akin to that of North America but is part of the West African Guinean shield. Previous published reconstructions of late Paleozoic fits of crustal plates and continents have failed to account for the differences in peninsula Florida basement and the geologic and tectonic continuities of peninsula Florida, Yucatan, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Bahamas. Pre-Atlantic reconstruction of the Gulf of Mexico in this study proposes that there was a Florida connection to Yucatan-Cuba-Africa during the Triassic. This reconstruction also shows that the Jurassic sediments that are well known in the northern Gulf Coast should have been deposited in similar depositional environments in southern Florida. Deep drilling on the Florida peninsula has confirmed this hypothesis. By using plate tectonic reconstruction based on the rising of the North Atlantic Ocean and evidence from petrology of basement samples from deep wells together with petrographic analyses of Jurassic sediments, a Smackover-equivalent exploration play can be developed. Petrographic andmore » petrophysical analysis of these wells that have encountered Jurassic marine shales, anhydrite, dolomite, carbonate, and elastic sediments has determined that these sediments are from shallow-water subtidal, tidal, intertidal, and supratidal environments. Excellent gas shows, oil stain in the pores and high TOC values in the marine shales, indicate that large accumulations of hydrocarbon are present.« less