TOTAL PETROLEUM SYSTEMS AND ASSESSMENT UNITS Middle East—Eastern Arabian Subcontinent

TOTAL PETROLEUM SYSTEMS AND ASSESSMENT UNITS

Middle East—Eastern Arabian Subcontinent

Overview
An estimated two-thirds of the world’s ultimately recoverable oil is in the Arabian -
Persian Gulf Region and in the Greater Arabian and Greater Oman Basins
(Beydoun, 1991; Cole Carrigan, and others, 1994; Cole, Abu-Ali and others, 1994;
Alsharhan and Nairn, 1997). Most oil is generated and produced from Jurassic
carbonates; however, Cretaceous, Paleozoic, and Infracambrian petroleum systems
account for production in numerous giant oil fields in reservoirs of equivalent age.
This area of the Middle East is rich in petroleum because it comprised an areally
extensive depositional platform along a pre-Mesozoic passive margin of Gondwana.
Subsequent development of intraplatform basins, extensive source-rock deposition
within these basins, and multiple tectonic stages of compression and extension,
produced large subtle structural closures coincident with peak oil generation and
migration. Moreover, the large resource base was secured by efficient horizontal
hydrocarbon migration into traps underlying thick, regionally extensive evaporite
seals.
Four, overlapping mega-TPS are identified in eight of the priority provinces located
on the eastern half of the Arabian Peninsula. This locale encompasses the area east
of the Arabian Shield, along the Arabian-Persian Gulf, eastward to the Zagros Fold
Belt and Oman Mountains and in eastern Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab
Emirates, Oman, Yemen, and Iran. Combined, this region comprises the Greater Arabian and Greater Oman Basins.