Abstract:

South America is one of the major oil and gas producing regions. It has recorded a number of significant exploration breakthroughs recently. Since 2007, several giant fields have been discovered in the sub-salt sequences in the Santos Basin, which indicates the promising exploration potential of sedimentary basins in South America, particularly deep water sub-salt play in the passive margin basins. Based on the up to date reserve data of oil and gas fields, this paper documents the oil and gas distribution features in terms of basin type. It also characterizes the areal and stratigraphic distribution of discovered oil and gas reserves. In South America, the foreland basin is the basin type with the richest oil and gas resources, followed by the passive margin basin. The foreland basins are located along the Andes Mountains. The ones in the northern and southern sectors are Cenozoic foreland basins and those in the middle sector Paleozoic foreland basins. The foreland basins which evolved from a proceeding passive margin basin development stage are the most prolific oil and gasbearing basins. They are represented by the East Venezuela and Maracaibo Basins. Along the Andes foreland basins, the main reservoir intervals vary from the Jurassic-Cretaceous in the south, through the Carboniferous in the middle, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary in the north. The passive margin basins lie along the South Atlantic margin. In this type of basins, oil and gas are mainly concentrated in the Cretaceous-Tertiary. Of them, the ones with evaporites tend to be richer in oil and gas and they are represented by Campos and Santos Basins.

Key words: South America, petroliferous basin, foreland basin, passive margin basin, oil and gas distribution