Tectonic Position, Hydrocarbon Exploration, and Future Potential in Bulgaria

Abstract

The oil- and gas-prospective areas in northern and southeastern Bulgaria and the adjacent regions on the Black Sea shelf are accepted as a part of the Carpatho-Balkan oil- and gas-bearing province. The peculiarities of the tectonic structures are conditioned by some specific, mostly collision processes during the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Tertiary. They are deciphered now with the help of the depth seismic explorations, and magnetotelluric, thermal, gravimetric, and magnetic data, in combination with geological mapping of south Bulgaria. The usual type of seismic data and well control as well exist in north Bulgaria and the Black Sea shelf zone; parts of this information has been published. Now an attempt is made for general overview of the three regions built by some parts of the Moesian platform; ForeBalkan, Balkan, and Srednogorie region; and the western part of the Black Sea megadepression, as well. Prospects of the Mesozoic and Tertiary sediments in north Bulgaria have been comparatively well studied, but questions remain for southeastern Bulgaria and the Black Sea shelf zone, coming from unresolved problems concerning the geological structure. Future regional exploration is expected to discover new deposits in the reef trends of Paleozoic, Triassic, and Late Jurassic-Valanginian age, and connected withmore » usual local Tertiary and Mesozoic structures and vast overthrust structures of the Balkan and southward, in both the offshore and onshore.« less