Stratigraphic and Structural Setting

Abstract. INTRODUCTION

The material which forms the basis of this project was obtained from a number of wells in the study area in Cyrenaica, the northeastern part of Libya. The study area, which is located between latitudes 25° and 33°N and between longitudes 20° and 25° E, covers some 365,750 square kilometres (see Fig. 1). The area extends from the Egyptian border in the east to the eastern flank of the Sirte Basin in the west and is part of the stable Saharan Shield.

Since Precambrian time several phases of epeirogenic movements have produced troughs, horst blocks or platforms which have in turn influenced the subsequent sedimentological history of the area. In the southern and southeastern part of the study area, the basement is unconformably overlain by a thick, partially marine Palaeozoic sequence which is in turn unconformably overlain by sediments of Jurassic or younger age. The basement in the central and southwestern parts of the area is unconformably overlain by non-marine clastics of Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous age or by marine sediments of Late Cretaceous and Tertiary age. In the eastern and northeastern section the basement is overlain by a wedge of eastward thickening marine Palaeozoic rocks which are in turn unconformably overlain by marine sediments of Late Cretaceous and Tertiary age. In the most northerly part of the northeastern region of the study area, a thick paralic sequence of Triassic, Jurassic and Early Cretaceous deposits is unconformably overlain by Late Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments.

PALAEOZOIC

Rocks of Cambro-Ordovician . . .