The Talara offshore (Northern Peru): a preserved extensional mini-basin in a subduction complex.

ROSSELLO, E.A., S. COSSEY & G. FERNÁNDEZ

Bogota

Simposio; XIIº Simposio Bolivariano de Cuencas Subandinas; 2016

The undrilled offshore Talara Basin is located along the northern Pacific margin of Peru. It is the western continuation of the Cretaceous-Tertiary stratigraphy of the large, traditional reservoirs of the onshore Talara Basin oilfields, which have been produced over 1.5 billion barrels of oil in the last hundred years.However, the offshore Talara is also located above the active margin of the Nazca plate, which is subducting under South America. It is also located between the trench and the onshore/shallow-marine oilfields, where several passive-margin extensional structures are described.The interpretation of high quality 3D seismic data in a detailed tectonostratigraphic context has shown the existence of the following typically passive-margin features: i) Synsedimentary gravity slides with normal and frontal thrust faults, ii) Rotational blocks of thick marine to deep-marine Cretaceous to more shallow Tertiary sequences, iii) Rollover anticlines, and iv) Neogene growth sequences preserved as piggy-backed mini-basins. The concave geometry of the master growth-faults has produced locally convergent radial slides which define the exploration plays and have created efficient hydrocarbon traps.The knowledge and insight obtained from this segment of the South AmericanPacific can be extrapolated to the more frontier exploration areas of theColombian Pacific margin.