A Review of the Offshore East Mediterranean Mesozoic-Cenozoic Petroleum Systems

A geological overview on the East Mediterranean realm, featuring the tectono-stratigraphic evolution and associated depositional environments as well as the known petroleum systems, is provided in this contribution. The Levant Basin, the (northern) Western Desert, and the Nile Delta are the main focus of this review because they include significant oil and gas discoveries (a total of 63,000 MMBOE has been forecasted for these regions), providing a considerable amount of data. The onshore–offshore extension of the Northern Western Desert (to Herodotus Basin) is compared to that of the Eastern Levant Margin—both share similar tectono-stratigraphic evolutions until the establishment of the Levant Fracture System. The Upper Cretaceous source rocks distribution across the Western Desert margin is, nevertheless believed to be controlled by increased bio-productivity and nutrients with sediment transport from nearby hinterland, contrasting an upwelling scenario for the same source rocks in the Levant Basin. The possibility of mixing hydrocarbon from these deeper kitchens with the known overlying microbial gas accumulated in the Oligo-Miocene interval has been proven by the Karish discovery in the Levant Basin and through modeling the probability for fracturing the Eocene sealing unit. This may well occur in offshore Western Desert. The Nile has been the principal sediment feeder of the East Mediterranean basins since the Late Miocene. The Nile Delta is characterized by Oligo-Miocene petroleum systems, while the deeper Mesozoic systems still need further studies. The presence of carbonate plays has already been demonstrated by the discovery of the giant Zohr field. Succeeding in finding similar prizes requires understanding the complexity of such heterogeneous, yet attractive carbonate reservoirs. The East Mediterranean realm remains a frontier hydrocarbon province with a considerable wealth of knowledge that will help in understanding sedimentary basins at the intersections of major plate boundaries and the association of deep lithospheric processes and major shallow and surface processes.