Prograding low-density turbidite systems and oil traps at the Lower Paleogene Chicontepec Foreland Basin, East-Central Mexico

Abstract

The Lower Paleogene Chicontepec Foreland Basin at the southern region of the Tertiary Tampico-Misantla Basin at East-Central Mexico, resulting from the loading pressure of the uplifted and thrust-folded front of the Sierra Madre Oriental, on the passive, unfolded and thermally in subsidence Cretaceous basement, during the northeastward tectonic stresses from the Laramide Orogeny, against the Tuxpan Island eastern. The foreland basin consists stratigraphically of complex low density turbidite systems, being their detached and non-channelized outer-fan lobe facies the most conspicuous, composite by disperse and discontinue sandy lenses with tight and highly cemented calcareous lithofacies, micro-fractured and with micro-vugs by dissolution. The hydrocarbons flowed vertically from the underlay Cretaceous and Upper Jurassic rocks through the NW-SE dextral transpressive strike-slip fault planes and fractures, then spread laterally toward the micro-fractured sandy lenses and within the unconformable erosive surfaces, bounding the depositional systems (systems tracts), at different levels of the Chicontepec stratigraphic column, in a hybrid petroleum system with low permeability unconventional reservoirs.