An Integrated Biostratigraphic
Reassessment of the
Douala/Kribi-Campo Basin, West Africa
Jean-P. Loule, Richard Seme Abomo, Martin Folo
Exploration in the Douala/Kribi-Campo basin for more than fourty years has
been based on local, scattered and scanty biostratigraphic
data from various oil
companies. Formation boundaries were often determined on the
appearence/extinction of single specimens, and the assumption that stage
boundaries are marked by the simultaneous evolutionary appearence/extinction of
a number of species from different groups of fossils. Thus, formation names were
equated to stage names (e.g. The Oligocene suellaba formation or else the
Miocene Matanda formation) and local biozones were extended at the basin scale
on pure intuition. To circumvent this misleading situation, an integrated
biostratigraphic
reassessment of the Douala/Kribi-Campo basin was effected using
data from eight signifi ant wells.
This reassessment led to the definition of an improved stratigraphic scheme
which has helped unravel the complex geology of this northernmost West Africa,
Salt Basin. Some important results are: the definition of a new formation named
the Kribi formation of upper pliocene age
, the revision of formation ages (e.g.
The Matanda formation previously known as Miocene in
age
is rather upper
Pliocene), the subdivision of both the Mundeck and Nkapa formations into two
chronostratigraphic Units, and the evidence, as of lower Oligocene, of an
evolutionary discrepancy in the sedimentary record between the southern and
northern parts of the basin.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91020©1995 AAPG Annual Convention, Houston, Texas, May 5-8, 1995