Petroleum System of the Gulf of Hammamet- a 1-D and 3-D Integrated Approach

Jedidi L. Aouicha¹, Jean Luc Rudkiewicz², Ben Dhia Hamad³, and Ghislain de Marsily^4
1ISTEUB, Residence beau site, Tunisia
²Department Geologie Structurale, Institute Francais du Petrole, Rueil, France
³LEEE, Sfax, Tunisia
⁴ENSMP, Paris, France

This study is located within the Gulf of Hammamet, N-E of Tunisia, and is characterized by complex geologic and tectonic history during the Cretaceous times and mainly during the Tertiary period.

This study aims at modeling source rock burial, hydrocarbon generation, expulsion, migration toward potential traps, as well as the assessment of traps evolution in reaction to the basin dynamics.

The simulation of generation and expulsion processes has been focused on the two source rocks: the Ypresian Bou Dabbous and the Albian Lower Fahdene Formations.

The method used is expected to help defining a chronological relation between the period of hydrocarbon expulsion, migration toward the traps and their architectural evolution following the basin geodynamics.

While 1D basin modeling makes it possible to reconstruct the basin thermal history as well as to evaluate the source rocks maturity through time, 3D basin modeling allows to characterize the migration paths and the possible ways of filling the potential traps and accumulation areas.

A 1D basin modeling study using Genex software was performed in the Gulf of Hammamet in order to quantify the hydrocarbon generation and expulsion histories in the area after construction of a conceptual model in terms of paleoenvironment, lithofacies, type of geologic events and their duration and heat flow. The model shows a heat flow varying between 38 and 55 mW/m².

A modeling, using Temis 3D software, provided the possibility to refine the history of migration of hydrocarbons and the saturation of the reservoir, as well as to evaluate quantitatively the pathways of the fluids. We varied the factors affecting the filling of the structures, testing 18 different scenarios. Among these scenarios we treated the case without faults, with tight faults (as barrier) and respectively permeable (as drain to the circulation of the fluids).

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90078©2008 AAPG Annual Convention, San Antonio, Texas