The Possible Origin of Hydrocarbon Generation Sourced From an Evaporative Environment: A Comparative Analog of Recent and Older Environments

Abstract

This work focuses on recent coastal sabkha at Ras Shukeir with older analogs of Miocene age from Gulf of Suez and Mediterranean Sea coast of North Sinai. Their presence represents indicators of prolific biological activity and productivity. TOC content, Rock-Eval pyrolysis, infrared spectroscopy, and gas chromatography for kerogen of recent sabkha and core samples from both analogs justify the possibility of the evaporative environments as hydrocarbons generator. The evaporitic environments can produce organic matter leading to hydrocarbon potentialities upon reaching optimum maturation. The obtained results propose that recent sabkha can uphold enriched altitudes of TOC content. The older analog (e.g., Ras Gemsa, SE Zeit) is anticipated to yield fair to excellent content, containing kerogen of type I and II with intermittent type III. This indicates oil prone source rock derived mainly from algal and planktonic biomass together with bacterial residues accumulated under saline to hypersaline and moderately to moderately high reducing condition. This favors that the studied examples are analogs of possible generation of hydrocarbons sourced from evaporative environment.