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oa The Surface-Piercing Salt Domes in the Ghaba Salt Basin (Oman): A Comparison to the Intra-Salt Hydrocarbon Play of the Ara Group
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, GEO 2010, Mar 2010, cp-248-00395
Abstract
In the South Oman Salt Basin the Ara carbonates form an extensively cored, deeply buried intra-salt<br>hydrocarbon play. Six surface-piercing salt domes in the Ghaba Salt Basin (North Oman) provide the<br>only outcrop equivalents for carbonates and evaporites of the Ediacaran-Early Cambrian Ara Group<br>(uppermost Huqf Supergroup). Based on fieldwork, satellite imaging and isotope analysis it is<br>concluded that most of the carbonate bodies (so-called stringers) in the Ghaba salt domes are time<br>equivalent to the stratigraphically uppermost stringer intervals in the South Oman Salt Basin (A5-A6).<br>Maturity analyses demonstrate that the carbonate stringers in the salt domes were transported with<br>the rising Ara salt from burial depths of [|#24#|] 6 to 10 km to the surface. Petrographic and stable<br>isotope data show that their diagenetic evolution during shallow and deep burial was very similar to the<br>Ara carbonate stringer play in the SOSB. However, during the retrograde pathway of salt diapir<br>evolution, the carbonate stringers were exposed to strong deformation in the diapir stem and<br>diagenetic alterations related to dedolomitisation. As the salt domes contain facies that are in all<br>aspects identical to the deeply buried Ara play in the South Oman Salt Basin, this study provides<br>substantial additional information for hydrocarbon exploration in South Oman. In addition, our work<br>has implications for the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Ghaba Salt Basin and possibly of other<br>Ediacaran-Early Cambrian evaporite basins in the Middle East such as for the time-equivalent ‘Hormuz’<br>salt basins.