Sedimentological Models and Hydrocarbon Potentialities of the Khatatba Formation (Jurassic), North Western Desert, Egypt

By

 A. Abu Shady¹, Mohamed Gawdat¹, M. El Awady², A. T. Hameed²

(1) Khalda Petroleum Company, Cairo, Egypt (2) Tanta University, N/A,

 The Khatatba sandstone with proven gas potential has gained much interest during the past few years after many discoveries in the Khalda concession, north Western Desert, namely, Shams, Tut, Amoun, Falak and Salam fields. These sandstone reservoirs are sourced mainly from the coal / shale sequence of the Khatatba formation, Jurassic age, which is the proven primary potential source in the Western Desert.

The Khatatba sandstones are complex, meandering channels of variable thickness. These types of sandstone reservoirs need great effort to predict and delineate after their discovery.

The study of the distribution and geometry of Mesozoic rock units (Khatatba formation) in the area of study indicated the influence of two tectonic trends of deposition at this time. These are NNE “Shushan basin” trend and the WNW “Tethyan” trend.

The main objective of this paper is to construct the sedimentological model of the Khatatba sandstone reservoirs to help in predicting the channels axis. Hence, determining the next location in the future exploration. Therefore, the integration of the sedimentological and petrophysical data, as well as detailed structure mapping are all important tools to achieve this objective.