October 12, 2021 | 7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m. CDT (UTC-05:00)

The Jurassic stratigraphy of the Middle East includes some of the world’s most economically significant petroleum systems, containing multiple world-class sources, reservoir and seal packages. Yet, when viewed regionally, these depositional systems are still not fully understood. This leads to inconsistencies in lithostratigraphic nomenclature across international boundaries and misconceptions in the stratigraphic architecture, which ultimately limits exploration and production success.  

We have applied sequence stratigraphic principles to the Jurassic strata of the eastern Arabian Plate to increase stratigraphic understanding and resolve some of the common misconceptions. This approach provides a robust, age-based framework to reduce lithostratigraphic uncertainty across international boundaries and provides predictive capabilities regarding the temporal and spatial distribution of source, reservoir, and seal facies.   

In this webinar, we focus on one of these stratigraphic misconceptions, which deals with the development and sedimentary infill of the Late Jurassic Gotnia Basin, and its relationship with the aggrading platform of the Rimthan Arch. Our literature-based re-interpretation proposes a primarily eustatic control, whereby the shallow water platform of the Rimthan Arch tracked sea level rise, and subsequently the Gotnia Basin became a starved intra-shelf basin. This revised interpretation has important consequences with regards to the lateral facies relationships and overall tectono-sedimentary understanding of the area, as well as the associated petroleum habitat.