Re-evaluation of the petroleum potential of the Kufra Basin (SE Libya, ne Chad): does the source rock barrier fall?

Abstract

The Kufra Basin is a large, underexplored, Palaeozoic intracratonic sag basin in SE Libya and NE Chad with extensions into NW Sudan and SW Egypt. The basin fill consists of shallow marine to fluvial deposits ranging in age from infracambrian to Cretaceous. Geologically, the basin is very similar to the Murzuq Basin in SW Libya which recently presented Libya with its largest oil discovery for over a decade. Most of the hydrocarbon play elements known from the Murzuq Basin also occur in the Kufra Basin: thick, porous Cambro-Ordovician sandstones are present and would form good reservoirs, lower Silurian shales may act as effective seals, and there are potential structural traps in seismically defined fault blocks. However, the source rock availability in the Kufra Basin is currently unclear. One of the two main source rock candidates in the basin is a lower Silurian shale unit (Tanezzuft Formation). The Tanezzuft shales have been described as being up to 130 m thick in outcrops at the basin margins, but the shales were found to be replaced by siltstones and sandstones in two dry exploration wells drilled in the northern part of the basin by AGIP between 1978 and 1981. Hot shales developed at the base of this widespread Silurian shale unit form important source rocks in many areas of North Africa and Arabia. These hot shales are interpreted to have been deposited in palaeodepressions, such as incised valleys of the preceding lowstand, or intrashelf basins, during the initial transgression after the melting of the late Ordovician ice cap. The areal distribution of the organic-rich unit is, therefore, discontinuous. Fieldwork in the Kufra Basin has shown that the basal Tanezzuft horizon is not exposed on the northern and eastern margins of the basin. Deep infracambrian rift grabens have been interpreted on seismic lines from the Kufra Basin and, in analogy to Oman and Algeria, could contain organic-rich infracambrian deposits. The infracambrian succession in the Kufra Basin may contain a second major potential source rock and warrants further investigation.