Variations on Petroleum Geology among Major Basins and Their Formative Mechanisms, Central and Southern South China Sea

Abstract

AbstractThe South China Sea (SCS), one of the largest marginal seas in West Pacific, has experienced two marginal sea tectonic cycles, the pro‐SCS and Neo‐SCS, forming a tectonic trend of “compression in the south, extension in the north, subduction in the east and strike in the west”, with various kinds of sedimentary basins developed. The Central and Southern South China Sea (CSSCS) mainly has Zengmu, Brunei‐Sabah, Wanan, Zhongjiannan, Nanwei, Beikang, Reed, Palawan and Nansha Trough basins (Fig. 1). Since the exploration in the early 20th century, hundreds of oil and gas fields have been discovered in the CSSCS, making it one of giant oil and gas provinces in the world. However, the oil and gas potential of the CSSCS varied a lot, even among adjacent basins. Oil and gas resources in the southern Zengmu and Brunei‐Sabah basins are huge in scale, with recoverable reserves of nearly 5.3 billion tons of oil equivalent, which is ten times of that the Wanan basin in the west. The oil and gas discoveries in the Beikang basin on the Nansha block are only one three‐hundredth of Zengmu basin. No commercial discoveries have been made in the Reed and Nanwei basins. Although several studies have focused on the petroleum geology of separate basins, no systematical comparison has been made among various basins to reveal their differences and gain an overall perspective, largely due to limited datasets. The present study aims to investigate these aspects, using 90,000‐km 2D seismic profiles, 34 well logs, three cores, 36 outcrops, as well as paleontology, gravity and magnetic data.