Mapping Upper Cretaceous Depositional Environments from Seismic Facies in the Colorado and Argentina Basins

The licensing round held in Argentina in 2019 and recent discoveries in the conjugate margin have attracted the attention of the oil and gas industry towards the Colorado and Argentina basins. Regional studies integrating plate reconstructions, conjugate margin analysis and source to sink concepts, among others, have provided confidence in the presence of Cretaceous source rocks in the Argentina margin. Upper Cretaceous clastic deposits have also been proven by wells and regional 2D seismic in the Colorado Basin, however, poor calibrations and sparsity of data have been an obstacle for the generation of reliable gross depositional environment maps. Our workflow integrates detailed 3D seismic observations with seismic facies interpretation in recent 2D regional lines of good quality, and with well data. Looking at various scales in an iterative way has been the base to generate regional gross depositional maps covering the Colorado, Argentina, and Salado basins. These maps provide important information about the distribution of reservoirs and seals in the area.