Dip-sealing fault
Revision as of 19:53, 9 February 2015 by Cwhitehurst (talk | contribs)
A dip-sealing fault traps hydrocarbons against the fault plane.
Importance of dip-sealing faults
Dip-sealing faults are important because they can create purely fault-dependent traps. No independent structural closure is required for entrapment. Where independent structural closure does exist, as in the figure below, a dip-sealing fault can trap additional volumes of oil against the fault. Dip-sealing faults can trap hundreds of meters of oil without independent closure. In Figure 1, both oil and gas are trapped against the fault and have not leaked up the fault zone.