10. Regional/Global Structural Applications
Delineation of Basins Boundaries in the Southern Part of Egypt using Gravity Data
Ahmed Salem(1), Said Elkwa(2) and Osama Farouk(2)
(1) Airborne Geophysics Department, Nuclear Materials Authority of Egypt, Egypt. (2) Ganoub El Wadi Holding Petroleum Company (Ganope), Egypt.
Abstract
Southern Egypt, south of latitude 28 is considered to be a very promising area from oil exploration point of view. It contains several basins of deposition distributed across it. Accordingly it is very important to define such basins and delineate their boundaries. We have attempted to delineate the basin boundaries in the southern part of Egypt using the Bouguer gravity data. In the present work, the gravity data were first digitized at an interval of 1 km. The data were then transformed to the frequency domain and regional/residual separation was made based on the power spectra in order to isolate deep sources from shallow sources. Derivatives filters were applied to both regional and residual data in the frequency domain. Results of derivatives analysis enabled tracing of several faults that are mainly striking in the S-N, NW-SE, NE-SW, and E-W directions. Depth to the basin boundaries was estimated based on gradient interpretation techniques (the analytic signal approach and Euler method) and found to be 1.2 km for shallower boundaries and 4.5 km for deeper boundaries. Results of this study and available geological information were used to build several conceptual structural models, which are useful for further oil exploration.
Last modified: Sat Apr 01 20:20:39 2006