Structural Control on Syn-Rift Oil Accumulations in the Northern Suez Rift, Egypt

By

Jasper Peijs¹, Mostafa Kamel², Don Easley², Jim Stewart³, Tamer Reda², Sarawy Mohamed², Howard Leach³, John Petler³

(1) BP, Houston, TX (2) Gupco, Cairo, Egypt (3) BP (Gulf of Suez Exploration Company), Cairo, Egypt

 ABSTRACT Since its serendipitous discovery in 1989, the play involving the Asl and Hawara formations (biostratigraphically defined Sequence 30) in the northern Gulf of Suez, Egypt has yielded more than 75 million barrels of oil. The structural geometry of the play has controlled the distribution of reservoir facies and of oil accumulations. Structurally, all the Sequence 30 discoveries are downthrown fault blocks fault-juxtaposed against oil accumulations in pre-rift reservoirs in the footwalls of large normal-fault blocks. Geochemical analysis indicates that the oils of Sequence 30 and pre-rift formations are compositionally similar. Fault plane maps demonstrate juxtaposition of Sequence 30 against the oil-bearing pre-rift formations. Comparison of oil water contacts (OWC) and lowest known oils of the pre-rift and the Sequence 30 reservoir suggests a possible common OWC for the accumulations. Sequence 30 may have been charged by a secondary migration of oil originally trapped in the pre-rift footwall reservoirs. In contrast, no hydrocarbons have been found in Sequence 30 rocks on the footwalls of major structural blocks.