Overview of the exploration potential of offshore Argentina – insight from new seismic interpretations

Abstract

Argentina's offshore sedimentary basins cover a vast area on one of the widest continental margins on the planet, yet they remain underexplored today. Previous exploration drilling has failed to encounter commercial volumes of hydrocarbons, in part due to the poor seismic imaging of legacy 1960s–1990s 2D seismic data, and to the majority of wells being drilled on structural highs outside of the source rock kitchens. In this study, we reviewed 52 000 km of recently acquired (2017–2018) regional 2D long-offset seismic data with broadband pre-stack time (PSTM) and depth migration (PSDM) processing. We identified five major structural domains with hydrocarbon prospectivity on the Northern Margin of Argentina and four on the Southern Margin, and the presence of previously unseen structural and stratigraphic traps involving sequences assigned to proven regional source rocks and reservoirs in Permian, Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks. The source and reservoir rocks, petroleum systems, and play types present in the deepwater of the undrilled Argentina Basin represent a true frontier for hydrocarbon exploration. Pseudo relief attribute seismic displays and amplitude v. angle (AVA) analysis are demonstrated to be valuable tools in predicting the stratigraphy of the basins. A new framework for understanding the oil and gas prospectivity of the study area is presented.