The Spanish petroleum systems and the overlooked areas and targets

Abstract

The structural complexity of the Spanish territory hampered the development of large sedimentary basins with a time-space evolution that could have allowed the accumulation and preservation of large hydrocarbon deposits. In spite of this, including the few exploratory wells drilled (3.13 wells / 1,000 square miles), Spain (including on and offshore) has up to eight geological systems with present or past commercial hydrocarbon fields: the Gulf of Cadiz-Guadalquivir Miocene foreland basin, the Cretaceous of the Betic ranges, the Jurassic and Lower Miocene of the Western Mediterranean Sea, the Albian sands of the Rioja Paleogene foreland basin, the Platform-Basin of the onshore Cantabrian basin, the Ypresian of the Pyrenees thrust belts, and the westward continuity of the Aquitania foreland basin in the Gulf of Biscay. There are other remaining areas that supposedly contain an exploratory potential that could be much higher than the systems mentioned above: the deep waters of the Mediterranean and Cantabrian seas and the Atlantic Ocean of the Canary Islands, the Mesozoic covered by the olistostromes of the Betic ranges, the onshore Triassic sandy reservoirs and the onshore Carboniferous sub-basins found throughout the mainland. These areas have an even lower level of exploration (0.26 wells / 1,000 square miles).