Petroleum Potential of Cretaceous Source Rocks in the Levant Basin

Several oil shows have been reported from offshore and onshore wells of the Levant Basin, which promoted research and exploration as indicators for potential economic discoveries in the yet unpenetrated Mesozoic interval of the basin. In most cases, no definitive source to oil correlation has been established, advocating the need for the fingerprinting of regional source rocks to compare their organic geochemical signatures to those of oils. A summary of known properties of oils sampled from different wells in the region raised several questions regarding source–oil and oil–oil correlation, maturity, and source of the organic matter. In this part of the project we examined the Cretaceous section in the region by conducting a sedimentological and organic geochemical investigation of organic-rich intervals from ODP well material and onshore wells in the Levant region. We show that organic-rich Upper Cretaceous deposits, Turonian OAE2, and lowermost Cretaceous Barremian organic-rich deposits, should be considered as viable candidates for sourcing hydrocarbon formation in the deep basin, where they might have matured.