oa Stratigraphic Controls on Carbonate Evaporite Stratigraphy - Importance to Hydrocarbon Exploration: Examples from Middle Eastern Oil Fields and Their Response to Plate Tectonic Cycle, Climate, Basin Position and Sea Level

Paleozoic, Mesozoic through Cenozoic sedimentary fill of the Tethys southern margin is subdivided stratigraphically by the beat of second- and third-order changes in eustasy, tectonic movement, sediment supply and Wilsonian cycles of plate movement. This northeastern flank of Gondwanaland extends from the Arabian Plate through Zagros and Taurus Mountains, Levant and North Africa. Regional chronostratigraphic charts and crosssections detail products of these processes and major petroleum production from carbonates and evaporites interbedded with clastic sequences; with flatter-lying horizons in Arabia, folded in the Zagros and Taurus Mountains of Iran and Turkey, wrenched margin through the Levant and disrupted block-faulted terrains in North Africa from Egypt through Libya.