Permo-Triassic Salt Provinces of Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic Margins Tectonics and Hydrocarbon Potential Permo-Triassic Salt Provinces of Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic Margins Tectonics and Hydrocarbon Potential Edited by Juan I. Soto Joan F. Flinch Gabor Tari Elsevier Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-12-809417-4 For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals Publisher: Candice Janco Acquisition Editor: Amy Shapiro Editorial Project Manager: Tasha Frank Production Project Manager: Anitha Sivaraj Cover Designer: Christian Bilbow Book cover image: Outcrop of Upper Triassic evaporites in southern Albania, close to the Greek border, with the Ionian Sea and the island of Corfu in the background. The dark Jurassic pelagic limestones overthrust the reddish Triassic claystones along a squeezed salt wall of the Ionian fold-and-thrust belt. Exploration wells encountered massive Triassic salt deposits in the nearby subsurface (see Bega and Soto, this volume). Back cover: Paleogeographic map by C.R. Scotese Typeset by SPi Global, India We have some salt of our youth in us W. Shakespeare (The Merry Wives of Windsor; Act II, Scene III) v Dedication Albert Walter Bally Albert Bally is Emeritus Professor at the Earth Science Department of Rice University, Houston, Texas. Albert Bally was born in The Hague, in the Netherlands, in 1925, but grew up in various countries, including Switzerland, Indonesia and Italy. He studied at the University of Zürich and received his PhD in 1953. His thesis work included map- ping in the Maiella area of the Central Apennines. As a student he took leave of absence in 1949 to work for Gulf Oil on a mapping assignment on southeast Sicily. After completing his Ph.D., he spent a year (1953-54) at the Lamont-Doherty laboratory at Columbia University of New York working on deep-water sediments. Bert spent most of his career with Shell Oil in Calgary and Houston. While with Shell Canada, he was one of the pioneers in the exploration of the Rocky Mountains and their foothills in Alberta. As a novel new exploration approach in a thrust-fold belt at that time, he started to integrate well, seismic and surface data. During this time he became Chief Geologist of Shell Canada. He was transferred in 1966 to Shell USA and progressed from manager of geologic research to Chief Geologist in 1968 and later to Senior Exploration Consultant in 1980. During this time he was involved in the exploration of the offshore and onshore United States and since 1972 with the study of global geology. By this time, Bert had gathered an enormous amount of experience working with reflection seismic data and regional geological information, which he synthesized into a global basin classification scheme that is still a major reference today. After 27 years at Shell, he joined Rice University in July 1981 as Chairman of the Department of Geology and Geophysics and also as the Harry Carothers Weiss Professor of Geology, a position he still holds today. At Rice, he successfully managed to make the link between the petroleum industry and academia and brought his experience to the academic world. He supervised numerous M.Sc. and Ph.D. projects by students coming to Houston from very different countries and regions worldwide. His students coined the term “Bally's Barrio,” referring to the large group of geologists and geophysicists, often from Spanish-speaking countries, who graduated under his academic guidance. During his tenure at Rice, Bert collaborated with numerous univer- sities and many oil companies worldwide. vii viii Dedication Bert Bally has numerous publications, but perhaps his most cited article is the one he coauthored with Gordy and Stewart in 1966, on the structure and evolution of the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains. In this work, he introduced the use of regional seismic data to perform balanced cross sections and understand fold-and-thrust belts. He coauthored the Stratigraphic Atlas for North and Central America in 1975, which outlines the Phanerozoic stratigra- phy of North America. The same year, as an example of this integration of industry and academia, he wrote “A geodynamic scenario for hydrocarbon occurrences.” Most geoscientists are familiar with Bally's work through his three-volume sets of seismic atlases published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, one on structural styles in 1983 and one on seismic stratigraphy in 1987. These atlases highlighted the use of reflection seismic data not only for the petroleum in- dustry, but also for academic work. These atlases instantly became a teaching reference for university students and also oil company professionals. As a counselor with the Geological Society of America, he proposed the Decade of North American Geology project, a large multivolume encyclopedia for the centennial celebration of the Geological Society of America. Bert coedited the introductory volume, which many consider the most comprehensive introduction to the geology of North America. Bally is the father of concepts commonly used today, such as inversion tectonics, envelopment thrusting, orogenic float, transfer and listric faults. He is also a pioneer not only in basin classification schemes, balanced cross sections and stud- ies of folded belts and their forelands, but also in the understanding of passive margins and salt tectonics using reflection seismic data. Bert has received numerous honorary awards, including the William Smith medal (The Geologic Society, London), the Gustav Steinmann Medal (Geologische Vereinigung, Germany), the R. J. Douglas Medal of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (1987), the Structural Geology and Tectonics Career Contribution award of the Geological Society of America (1988), and honorary fellowships (AAPG and European Geosciences Union). He was also the President of the Geological Society of America (1988), received the Sidney Powers Medal from the AAPG (1998), and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Special Commendation Award (1995). Bert was also the president of the Commission of the International Lithosphere Program in 1990–92, and member of numerous geological and geosciences international commit- tees. Recently he has awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the University of Fribourg in Switzerland (2016). We, as coeditors of this book, consider ourselves his students because we have spent years with him learning amazing things about a very wide spectrum of topics, not only related to geoscience. Along with the other students in Bally's Barrio, we all feel that we could not possibly have had a more influential teacher. Bert became a role model for us, influencing everything we do in geoscience and beyond. His passion for understanding this planet became an inspiration for all of us and for everyone who has had the chance to work with him. In Memoriam Martin P.A. Jackson (1947–2016) Martin Jackson began his professional career as a Lecturer at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, where he specialized in Precambrian gneiss tectonics from 1976 to 1979. He moved to the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) in 1980. At the BEG Martin began studying salt tectonics even though, as he said, “this was then one of the most moribund topics in structural geology.” After several years of research on salt structures in a series of projects investigating suitability of salt for storage of nuclear waste, Martin was called into BEG Director Bill Fisher’s office. Fisher told him “Jackson, it’s time to bring in the groceries,” urging him to start an independent research program. This was the origin of the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory (AGL), founded in 1988. Over the next 25 years Martin Jackson built the AGL into the preeminent institution for the study of salt tectonics in the world. Major concepts in salt tectonics pioneered or advanced by AGL researchers include salt welds, salt canopies, reac- tive diapirs, falling diapirs, results of diapir shortening, controls on cross-sectional shapes of passive diapirs and extrusive salt sheets, advance mechanisms of salt sheets, sheet-margin thrust systems, and minibasin-subsidence mechanisms, among many others. AGL researchers have studied salt tectonics in most of the world’s major salt basins, and have conducted a series of groundbreaking physical and numerical models. In the process, Martin became a worldwide authority on salt tec- tonics, as recognized in the form of many honors and awards. Martin was a brilliant and creative scientist, and served as a mentor and inspiration to many younger researchers. He was also a true gentleman, respected and admired by his peers. It would be very difficult to find someone who didn’t like Martin Jackson, and who didn’t consider it a privilege to know him. His leadership, expertise and friendship will be greatly missed by all of his colleagues. (by Mike Hudec) ix x In Memoriam Ulf Bayer (1949–2016) Ulf Bayer studied geology at the Technical University of Stuttgart, where he received a diploma degree in 1975. Afterwards, he enrolled at the University of Tübingen, receiving his doctoral degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in 1977 and a subsequent habilitation degree and lectureship in 1983. In 1981, he received the Hermann-Credner Prize of the German Geophysical Society (DGG). In the context of the Heisenberg Program of the German Science Foundation (DFG), he worked as a visiting scientist from 1984 until 1988 at the universities of Leicester and Birmingham in the United Kingdom, as well as at the universities of New Brunswick in Canada and Princeton in the United States, and at the Research Centre of Schlumberger-Doll at Richfield. From 1988 to 1992 he worked in the Institute of Petroleum and Organic Geochemistry at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. After this epoch, he started to work at the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences until his retirement in 2014. Since 1994, he held a professorship position at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His research interests were focused on the modeling of varied geological processes, addressing different aspects re- lated to the structure and evolution of the sedimentary basins. One of his main interests was to integrate geological and geophysical data and methods, and with this intention he focused, for example, on coupled fluid, heat and mass transfer in sedimentary basins, and how these processes are linked to salt tectonics. Prof. Ulf Bayer was one of the first geoscientists in approaching salt movements numerically, by using finite-element models in three dimensions. As part of his research and leadership, he was a member of the German EUROPROBE steering committee from 1998 to 2001, being the main researcher of numerous projects related to DEKORP Basin’96 project, with the support of the DFG. He was also one of the leading scientists that initiated and coordinated in Germany the priority research program titled “Dynamics of Sedimentary Basins Under Varying Stress Regimes,” dedicated also to analyzing the incidence of salt tecton- ics within the Central European Basin System. Prof. Ulf Bayer passed away on Jun. 30, 2016 after a long illness. We shall miss his brilliant mind and his irreplaceable, masterful guidance. (by Yuriy Maystrenko and Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth) Contributors Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors’ K.L. Kendell (287), Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore contributions begin. Petroleum Board, Halifax, NS, Canada W. Alouani (543), OMV Tunesia, Tunis, Tunisia H. Kiersnowski (243), Polish Geological Institute— National Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland U. Bayer* (203), GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany P. Krzywiec (243), Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Z. Bega (517), OMV Petrom S.A., Bucharest, Romania K. Kwolek (243), PGNiG S.A., Piła, Poland P. Cámara (371, 395), Madrid, Spain C. Leitner (467), University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria G. Cantarella (543), OMV Tunesia, Tunis, Tunisia S. Lindsø (265), ExploCrowd, Stavanger, Norway E. Casciello (563), Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera, Barcelona, Spain S.G. Lucas (43), New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque, NM, United States G. Czapowski (243), Polish Geological Institute—National Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland M. Malaval (563), University of Bordeaux 3, Pessac, France M.E. Deptuck (287), Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, Halifax, NS, Canada J.D. Martín-Martín (563), Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera; University of Barcelona, Barcelona, P. Esestime (499), Spectrum Geo Ltd., Woking, United Spain Kingdom Y.P. Maystrenko (203), Geological Survey of Norway, R. Fainstein (313), Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal Trondheim, Norway M. Fleming (353), Repsol, The Woodlands, TX, United T. McKie (159), Shell U.K. Limited, Aberdeen, United States Kingdom J.F. Flinch (3, 129, 395, 417), Repsol Exploracion S. A., G. Messager (563), Statoil, TDP RDI CPR CP, Bergen, Madrid, Spain Norway J. Gallastegui (353), Universidad de Oviedo, Asturias, M. Moragas (563), Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Spain Almera, Barcelona, Spain G. Georgiev (483), Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria J. Mosar (447), Fribourg University, Fribourg, Switzerland C. Grelaud (563), University of Bordeaux 3, Pessac, France B. Novotny (331), Sterling Energy PLC, London, United M. Gruber (447), Fribourg University, Fribourg, Kingdom Switzerland K. Pelz (581), OMV Exploration & Production GmbH, M. Hafid (331), Ibn Tofail University, Kénitra, Morocco Vienna, Austria D.W. Hunt (563), Statoil, TDP RDI CPR CP, Bergen, R. Pena dos Reis (313), Coimbra University, Coimbra, Norway Portugal H. Jabour (331), ONHYM, Rabat, Morocco T.M. Peryt (243), Polish Geological Institute—National Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland C.A.-L. Jackson (175), Imperial College, London, United Kingdom N. Pimentel (313), Lisbon University, Lisbon, Portugal R. Joussiame (563), University of Bordeaux 3, Pessac, P. Pomianowski (243), Geofizyka Toruń S.A., Toruń, France Poland * Deceased xix xx Contributors B. Rasmussen (313), Simula Research Laboratory, Fornebu, I. Sharp (563), Statoil, TDP RDI CPR CP, Bergen, Norway Norway A. Sommaruga (447), Fribourg University, Fribourg, Ph. Razin (563), University of Bordeaux 3, Pessac, France Switzerland M. Reis (313), Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal J.I. Soto (3, 129, 417, 517), Granada University, Granada, Spain L. Reuning (221), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany C. Spötl (467), University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria M.G. Rowan (97, 265), Rowan Consulting, Inc., Boulder, S.A. Stewart (175), Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia CO, United States F. Strozyk (115, 221), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, E. Saura (563), Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera, Germany Barcelona, Spain D.C. Tanner (221), LIAG, Leibniz Institute for Applied M. Scheck-Wenderoth (203, 221), RWTH Aachen Geophysics, Hannover, Germany University, Aachen; GFZ German Research Centre for G. Tari (3, 129, 331, 483, 543), OMV Exploration and Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany Production, Vienna, Austria A. Schettino (57), University of Camerino, School of H. Troudi (543), OMV Tunesia, Tunis, Tunisia Science and Technology, Camerino, Italy P. Turner (581), Brigantia Resources Ltd, Streetly, United M. Schori (447), Fribourg University, Fribourg, Switzerland Kingdom V. Scisciani (499), University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti J. Vergés (563), Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera, and Pescara, Chieti, Italy Barcelona, Spain C.R. Scotese (57), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, G. Zamora (353), Repsol, The Woodlands, TX, United United States States