What is it about?
It appears that the first hydrocarbon wells in Colombia, northern South America, were drilled around 1883, after a commission was sent to investigate an area where fires, gas emissions and strong oil odors where reported during civil works between the city of Barranquilla and the town of Puerto Colombia. It was really an oil mining operation that resulted in the production of 50 barrels per day of light oil, which was followed by the drilling of the Las Perdices Wells, located in the northern end of a structure called the Cibarco anticline. More than a century later, hydrocarbon exploration still remains incipient in the convergent margin of NW South America, which is an important mobile shale tectonic setting. While hydrocarbon plays related to mud-diapirs are commercially productive in basins such as the Eastern Venezuelan Basin, Trinidad and the South Caspian Basin among many others, the first hydrocarbon discoveries in this part of NW Colombia only took place recently. In this article we integrate subsurface and surface geological and geophysical data to study the influence of mud diapirism on the formation and evolution of the anticline where presumably the first hydrocarbon wells were drilled in Colombia, and we also analyze the main causes of the overpressures that triggered and controlled shale mobilization in the northern portion of the San Jacinto Fold belt.
Featured Image
Photo by Натали А. on Unsplash
Why is it important?
In this study we propose for the first time that the formation of the Cibarco anticline occurred under the influence of flowing mobile muds and shales, which we believe are coming from a deep Upper Oligocene mudstone unit called the Lower Ciénaga de Oro Formation. Furthermore, we also propose that the main mechanism which caused the overpressures that triggered and controlled shale mobilization was disequilibrium compaction related to sedimentary loading of impermeable seals and to the shortening and inversion of pre-Oligocene extensional faults. Our findings will hopefully help us to reduce the risk in hydrocarbon exploration in the area and to increase our understanding of the behaviour of structures and rocks influenced by the flow of mobile shales in the convergent margin of NW South America.
Perspectives
While in Colombia the most impressive and spectacular active mud volcanoes are located farther to the west in the Sinú fold belt, where several of them are important tourist destinations, the influence of mud diapirism on the evolution of the San Jacinto fold belt hasn't been so clear. This publication is the result of more than a decade of integration of the results of different G&G activities and of very different and contrasting geological interpretations, considering the structural and stratigraphic complexity of the area and the relatively poor seismic imaging, typical of the northern San Jacinto fold belt. It has been a pleasure for me to participate in these activities and to contribute to increasing the knowledge of this poorly known but fascinating frontier area of northern Colombia, where we expect to continue finding more hydrocarbon resources to boost the energy transition in Colombia and South America.
Josue Alejandro Mora
Hocol
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Cibarco Anticline of the northernmost San Jacinto fold belt: Possible influence of mud diapirism on the Neogene to Recent evolution of the structure where the first oil and gas wells were drilled in Colombia., Interpretation, August 2024, Society of Exploration Geophysicists,
DOI: 10.1190/int-2024-0024.1.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
