Rifting Cretaceous

As a first example, we consider the diagenesis of clastic sandstones in the Gippsland basin, southeastern Australia, basing our model on the work of Harrison (1990). The Gippsland basin is the major offshore petroleum province in Australia. Oil production is from the Latrobe group, a fluvial to shallow marine sequence of Late Cretaceous to early Eocence age that partly fills a Mesozoic rift valley. 

The Intra-Apennine area was affected by late Triassic to Jurassic rifting, with sedimentation of both complete and reduced successions inside progressively deepening extensional basins. Starting in Cretaceous time,... 

Lucassen F., Lewerenz S., Franz G., Viramonte J., and Mezger K. (1999) Metamorphism, isotopic ages and composition of lower crustal granulite xenoliths from the Cretaceous Salta Rift, Argentina. Contrib. Mineral. Petrol. 134(4), 325-341. 

Conclaves F. T. T. (2002) Organic and isotope geochemistry of the Early Cretaceous rift sequence in the Camamu Basin., Brazil paleolimnolgical inferences and source rock models. Org. Geochem. 33(1), 67-81. 

Bruhn, C.H.L (1993) High-re..solution stratigraphy, reservoir geometry and facies characterization of Cretaceous and Tertiary turhidites from rift and passive margin Brazilian basins. PhD thesis, McMaster University, Hamilton. 

Giroir, G., Merino, E. Nahon, D. (1989) Diagenesis of Cretaceous sandstone reservoirs of the south Gabon rift basin. West Africa mineralogy, mass transfer, and thermal evolution. J. sediment. Petrol, 59, 482-493. 

Fig. 3. Palaeogeographical reconstructions of Serraria Formation. Early Cretaceous pre-rift sedimentation. (A) At the time of maximum extension of the lacustrine system and beginning of the fluvial sedimentation of the Serraria sandstones (B) at the time of maximum expansion of the Serraria fluvial system. Modified from Garcia (1992).

Still during the Early Cretaceous, the establishment of the initial outlines of continental margins in the African and South American plates (proto-rift phase) caused subsidence of the central part of the depression and the development of a new shallow lacustrine environment. After this, narrow rift basins developed and Gondwana was fragmented. 

At present the Serraria Formation is exposed in some parts of the middle domain (Japoata-Penedo area). In outcrops to shallow burial sectors of this domain the present burial depth is 50-900 m (Fig. 21). Depths of up to 2000 m are estimated for the syn-rift subsidence phase (wbO-SO C) in this domain. After the Lower Cretaceous uplift, depths of a 3500 m were attained in deeper blocks ( 100°C). 

In the Lower Cretaceous (Berriasian-Albian) Hibernia to Avalon/Ben Nevis formations, which contain the main reservoir levels of the Hibernia Field (the 200 m thick Hibernia Sandstone and the 150 m thick Catalina Member of the Whiterose Formation, as well as the up to 800 m thick Avalon/Ben Nevis Sandstone), the shift to elastic-dominated marginal-marine and marine sedimentation occurred, as rifting continued in the Grand Banks region. Most of the detrital material was derived from elevated areas to the west (Bonavista Platform Figs 1 and 3) and southwest (Avalon Uplift Jansa Wade, 1975) of the Jeanne d Arc basin, but also from uplifted and... 

The post-rift sedimentary history is recorded in the transgressive Upper Cretaceous Dawson Canyon and Tertiary Banquereau Formations above the mid-Cretaceous break-up unconformity. Shallowing occurred in Oligocene time, and may have led to subaerial exposure in the Miocene (Grant et al., 1986). 

Abid, l.A. (1988) Mineral diagenesis and porosity evolution in the Hibernia Oil Field, Jurassic-Cretaceous Jeanne D Arc rift graben, eastern Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Canada. MSc thesis, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, 280 pp. 

Crustal doming associated with Latest Cretace-ous-Paleocene rifting in the North Atlantic terminated marine deposition in northeast Ireland. Subsequently, Paleocene extrusive igneous activity deposited at least 240 m of plateau basalts over the... 

Renne PR, Ernesto M, Pacca IG, Coe RS, Glen JM, Prevot M, Perrin M (1992) The age of Parana flood volcanism, rifting of Gondwanaland, and the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. Science 258 975-979... 

The heat flow model used in this study, as described above, is based on a McKenzie model of exponential decreasing heat flow after the latest tectonic rifting event in late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous. 

It is important to realize that small faults which may be important with respect to fluid flow properties can be in some cases easily overlooked in cores or thin sections (Sverdrup Bjorlykke 1992). It is generally assumed that in the Halten Terrace most of the faulting occurred pene-contemporaneously with the rifting in the Upper Jurassic. Most of the faults seen on seismic section only extend into the base Cretaceous... 

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