Tertiary Evolution and Petroleum Habitat of the Sauna Basin, South-East Mexico

Adan Oviedo, Guillermo Mora, Richard Herbert

The Salina Basin of Southeast Mexico lies adjacent to the deformed Mesozoic carbonate platform which borders the southern Gulf of Mexico. The basin contains up to 7 km. of Tertiary sediments, deposited in foreland basin and passive margin settings. Compressional tectonics initiated during the Late Cretaceous in the Sierra de Chiapas in response to collision of the Pacific and North American plates. Uplift and erosion of the Chiapas Massif and the Chortis Block provided a - source of siliciclastic sediments which were deposited in a basinal - setting in front of the thrust belt, infilling the remnant topography of the Mesozoic platform margin and the fore land basin which developed in flexural response to compression. The presence of a widespread Mid-Late Jurassic salt lay r beneath the Salina Basin aided the propagation of thrusting across the basin, associated with the emplacement of extensive salt canopies throughout the Paleogene and Miocene. Compression was active intermittently from Late Cretaceous to Recent times, with a major folding event during the Mid-Miocene. Subsequent basin evolution was dominated by regional uplift of the Sierra de Chiapas during the Plio-Pleistocene, which provided a large volume of sediments. These sediments caused a rapid northward progradation of the shelf margin into the present-day Gulf of Mexico, loading the Paleogene and Miocene salt canopies. Subsequent evacuation of the salt towards the Gulf of Mexico formed extensive salt-withdrawal basins, of which the Comalcalco Basin is an example.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91020©1995 AAPG Annual Convention, Houston, Texas, May 5-8, 1995