Abstract
The Sirt Basin contains most of Libya’s producing oil fields and is in northern Libya, south of the Gulf of Sirt in the Mediterranean Sea. The main aims of this study were to characterize the type of organic matter and depositional conditions of the source rocks and thermal maturity of the crude oils in this region using a variety of geochemical techniques including gas chromatography (GC), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GCMS), stable carbon and hydrogen isotopes, total organic carbon (TOC), and Rock Eval analysis. Twelve crude oil samples from Cambrian–Ordovician Gargaf, Upper Paleocene Zaltan, and Middle Eocene Gialo reservoirs and seventy-nine source rock samples representing Sirt Shale samples from nine wells were collected from the Zaltan Platform and surrounding troughs in the central Sirt Basin. Organic geochemical parameters indicate that these oils were sourced from marine organic matter deposited under oxic to suboxic conditions. The oils were divided into three groups based on their whole oil carbon and hydrogen isotopic composition and thermal maturity as manifested by several saturate and aromatic hydrocarbon maturity parameters. Based on the geochemical data, it is proposed that there are at least two sources for the crude oils in the Zaltan Platform area of the central Sirt Basin. The study also indicates that the Sirt Shale source rocks from Maradah Trough are dominated by marine organic matter and have reached the main phase of oil generation.
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