Petroleum Source Rocks of Egypt: An Integrated Spatio-temporal Palynological and Organic Geochemical Studies Within the Phanerozoic

Abstract

This chapter evaluates the integration between optical and geochemical methods as one of the best ways to screen hydrocarbon source rock potential and its diagnostic impact on kerogen investigation, in addition to its consistent involvement in paleoenvironmental inferences. While those kerogen types are usually resulting from Rock-Eval data, palynofacies and organic petrographic data deliver additional and consistent information. Rock-Eval data for samples with low to moderate TOC are mostly non-reliable due to free hydrocarbons in the mineral matrix. Consequently, palynofacies analysis represents a valuable complementary proxy for investigating the petroleum generation potential of source rocks. This chapter presents the first comprehensive review of the application of palynofacies with respect to the framework of geochemical data and the interpretations of different spatio-temporal source rock windows in Egypt. This integrated palynofacies and geochemical approach provides an improved understanding of the paleoenvironmental and petroleum source potential studies of the Phanerozoic sequences in Egypt.