2015 SPA - Mar Moragas Rodriguez - Influence of diapir growing in carbonate deposition: The Central High Atlas Jurassic Rift Basin (Morocco)

[This post is participating at the 2015 Student Presentation Awards at ICTJA]

All of us use oil, gas, and plastic, which is a product deriving from petroleum. Oil and gas (hydrocarbon) are stored in the subsurface (between 1 and 6 km); in rocks (reservoirs) that have voids in which these fluids can be contained. At these depths, it is difficult to know where we can find these raw materials. Thus, we carry out field studies to have a better understanding of geological systems comparable to those where hydrocarbons might be emplaced.

In the present work we focus on a specific reservoir type: Carbonate deposits. Imagine a coral reef that you know very well from wildlife documentaries, they produce carbonate which later on will result in carbonate rocks; but are they distributed everywhere in our planet? No, nowadays they are mainly located in shallow marine environments with warm waters. Light, temperatures, water depth, amongst a large amount of other factors, control their development and demise and of other carbonate production factories. Patterns of carbonate platform development and deposition are generally complicated on diapiric settings. Diapirs are a type of geological structures formed due to the upward movement of mobile and less dense material (salt or shales) through more brittle rocks. Diapir growth and rapid salt movements cause high variability of carbonate distribution patterns and hampers the predictability of where we can find them.

In order to have a complete picture of the evolution of diapiric basins and the distribution of carbonate deposits, different study methods (structural, sedimentological, diagenetic, amongst others) are applied on Jurassic-aged diapiric structures located in the Central High Atlas, Morocco. The study of this area allows us to characterize the carbonate deposit associated to diapirs (carbonate type, thickness and length of carbonate units,...) and to understand the influence of diapir growth on the carbonate deposition.

This study is funded by Statoil Research Centre, Bergen (Norway), by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) through the projects Intramural Especial (CSIC 201330E030), MITE (CGL 2014-59516). We are grateful to Statoil for its support and permission to publish this research.