The Western Mediterranean: established concepts and new insights

Paolo Esestime, Richard Wrigley and Neil Hodgson present a new interpretation of the Western Mediterranean Basin. The new insights connect the evolution of the onshore and the offshore areas, challenging the established basin model and the historic play concepts. Understanding the regional tectonic model of a basin is essential to provide the framework for the structural, sedimentary and thermal evolution, which are the basis for defining the petroleum system. The revisiting of accepted basin models is a good practice when new data becomes available from seismic campaign and drilling activity, allowing the interpretation to be finessed and more consistent with wells and geological data from the outcrops. The Western Mediterranean is a deep-water basin bounded by several orogens active since the Late Cretaceous-Paleocene, when the closure of the Tethys Ocean started (Stampfli et al., 2002; Golonka, 2014). The Paleogene-Neogene subduction and the collisional phases are responsible for the structural setting of the circum-Mediterranean orogens and the distribution of their allochthonous units, which are present in the mountain ranges (Figure 1).