The onshore West Baram Delta deposits: Provenance and drainage in the Middle Miocene to Pliocene in NW Borneo and comparison to the Champion Delta

Abstract

The Baram Delta province in NW Borneo forms a major hydrocarbon reservoir offshore northern Sarawak and Brunei. The delta sequence is thereby subdivided into the West Baram delta to the south and the Champion delta to the north. Onshore are the remains of the Neogene delta deposits exposed and provide the possibility to study the equivalent offshore successions in outcrop. This study focuses on the Neogene West Baram delta successions which were studied for sedimentological facies and provenance characteristics. The successions consist of the Lambir, Miri, Tukau, and the enigmatic southern Lambir/Belait-Sarawak formations. Deposition took place in various mixed-energy delta environments between the Langhian and early Pliocene. The sediments are all quartz-rich and heavy minerals are dominated by ultra-stable zircon, rutile and tourmaline. Dominant detrital zircon age clusters are in the Early Cretaceous and Permian-Triassic. Based on light mineral petrography, heavy mineral assemblages, and detrital zircon U–Pb geochronology, all formations are interpreted as derived from multi-recycled sources, likely the underlying Paleogene Rajang Group turbidites and the Oligocene to Lower Miocene Nyalau-Tatau delta deposits. Additionally, literature data of the Champion Delta and one sample from Labuan analysed for provenance in this study are used to demonstrate that the Champion Delta can be distinguished from the West Baram Delta by having higher chrome spinel and garnet contents and slightly different detrital zircon age populations. The Champion Delta deposits are interpreted as sourced by recycling of the Crocker Formation and older turbidites (e.g., Sapulut Formation) with potentially input from ultra-mafic basement rocks of Sabah.