Projects
PETROliferous MEXican BASins: Petroleum Systems & Source-to-Sink Study (PETROMEXBAS Project)
A must-have regional study, designed to provide our clients with comprehensive modern geological and geochemical data to help evaluating and prioritizing their exploration targets in the onshore eastern Mexico and Gulf of Mexico
The eastern Mexican onshore sedimentary basins contain significant discovered/developed and undiscovered hydrocarbon resources. Yet, these basins are relatively poorly studied, and the modern geological and geochemical data are scarce. There are significant uncertainties about depositional history of the sedimentary basins, hydrocarbon source rock evolution, and petroleum potential as a whole. The multiclient
PETROMEXBAS Project is designed to acquire new data on oil seeps, source, reservoir, and seal rocks by conducting field works in each basin in eastern Mexico. These new data, once acquired and integrated with existing geological data, will allow us to refine the geological history and the petroleum systems of the eastern Mexican sedimentary basins, so that we can constrain both onshore and offshore hydrocarbon potential with much greater accuracy.
PETROMEXBAS Goal & Design
The primary goal of the Project is to provide petroleum companies with the modern data that will be used to prioritize their exploration programs and hence investment opportunities in Mexico.
Location of the PETROMEXBAS Project Modules:
The project consists of 5 modules:
- Module 1: Regional geology and paleogeography
- Module 2: Southeastern basins
- Module 3: Veracruz Basin
- Module 4: Tampico-Misantla Basin
- Module 5: Burgos Basin
The Project Deliverables:
The Project includes:
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- full (bulk and molecular) source rocks and oil seep geochemical characterization
- new analytical results on reservoirs and seals, such as:
- U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology,
- Apatite & Zircon fission track data,
- Clay mineralogy and other isotopic methods.
The newly obtained geological and geochemical data will be further integrated with existing geological and geochemical data to clarify the complex geological and petroleum history of the eastern Mexican basins, specifically:
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- tectonic phases and structural styles
- clastic rock provenance and depositional environments
- magnitude and timing of uplift and erosion
- thermal history of the basins and hydrocarbon charge
- regional deposition environments and sedimentary facies
Project Timing
Project implementation schedule and order is temporary and is subject to corrections based on clients’ priorities
Module 1: Regional geology and paleogeography
The Module 1 is designed to provide a comprehensive revision and compilation of published and unpublished public-domain data on geology, paleogeography and hydrocarbon systems of the eastern Mexican sedimentary basins. Over past two decades, there has been a significant amount of data published in PhD theses and limited-access reports that are largely unavailable to a broad petroleum geoscience community. We designated a considerable effort to collect these data and to compile them in a series of ArcGIS databases that allowed us to revise regional tectonics, stratigraphy, paleogeography and petroleum systems of the vast region of the eastern Mexico and the entire Gulf of Mexico.
MODULE 1 REPORT: PROVISIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- INTRODUCTION
- REGIONAL GEOLOGY OVERVIEW
- Tectonic setting
- Regional stratigraphic framework
- Tectonic deformation phases and styles
- PALEOGEOGRAPHY
- Callovian
- Oxfordian
- Kimmeridgian
- Tithonian
- Early Cretaceous (Neocomian)
- Albian-Cenomanian
- Campanian-Maastrichtian
- Paleocene
- Eocene
- Oligocene
- Miocene
- Pliocene
- PETROLEUM GEOLOGY OVERVIEW
- History of drilling and field discovery
- Oil & gas fields distribution and characteristics
- Hydrocarbon systems
- Tithonian
- Jurassic
- Cretaceous
- Cenozoic
Module 2: SOUTHEASTERN BASINS
The Module 2 addresses the geology and hydrocarbon systems of the Southeastern Mexican basins. The key element of this Module, as well as the Modules 3, 4, & 5 will be the extensive filed work and sampling of rock exposures, including Mesozoic rocks in the deformed Sierra Madre foreland region and Cenozoic rocks exposed within the basin itself. We will acquire a representative collection of source, reservoir and seal rocks that will be high-graded for a series of analytical studies such as RockEval, organic matter geochemistry, U, Th, and He isotopic composition, U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology, Apatite and Zircon fission track studies, and some other. The analytical program will be developed to obtain as best constrained results as possible on source rock composition and thermal history, as well as on reservoir rocks provenance and quality.
MODULE 2 REPORT: PROVISIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- INTRODUCTION
- REGIONAL GEOLOGY
- Tectonic setting
- Tectonic deformation phases and styles
- Uplift/erosion phases based on apatite and zircon fission track data
- Phases of tectonic compression and extension and related structural styles
- Foreland deformation zones and related structural styles
- Regional stratigraphic framework
- CLASTIC SEDIMENT PROVENANCE AND PALEOGEOGRAPHY
- U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology
- Non-organic geochemistry
- Heavy minerals study
- Mesozoic paleogeography and environments of deposition
- Cenozoic paleogeography and environments of deposition
- PETROLEUM GEOLOGY
- Plays, prospects and oil & gas fields distribution and characteristics (including unconventional plays)
- Oil and gas geochemical characterization and families
- Hydrocarbon systems analysis
- Burial, source, reservoir and seal rocks
- Hydrocarbon generation, migration, entrapment and preservation
- Thermal history of sedimentary basins
Each report will be accompanied by ArcGIS projects containing all produced maps and spatial datasets used in the report
