Voring

Potential Source-Rocks

Infrastructure and Substratum of a Divergent Margin

First of all remember (i) the infrastructure is the sedimentary interval bounded between by the pre-rifting unconformity and the breakup unconformity and (ii) the substratum is the sedimentary interval below the pre-rifting unconformity. The substratum can be formed by sedimentary rocks, by post break lava flows or by a basement a crystalline basement. If there is a petroleum system in Vøring deep offshore, the generating petroleum sub-system (source-rocks), illustrated here by a tentative interpretation of a Canvas autotrace, can just be associated with the rocks of the infrastructure, i.e., within the Mesozoic rift-type basins, which were developed during the lengthening of the Pangea supercontinent lithosphere, i.e., before the deposition of the lava-flows, which postdate the breakup of the lithosphere. The margin rocks, directly, linked to the opening of the NE Atlantic, are, mainly, deep deposits poor in organic matter. Furthermore, if horizons rich in organic matter had been deposited in the margin, the total thickness of the margin sediments seems to be insufficient to produce the necessary burial for the organic matter reach maturation. Certain geoscientists advance the possibility of potential source-rocks in the infrastructure of the margin, i.e., below the SDRs (lava-flows) eventually within inverted Triassic / Jurassic rift-type basins, as point out in this tentative geological interpretation.