Deltaic reservoirs

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Oil Field Production Geology
Series	Memoirs
Part	The Production Geologist and the Reservoir
Chapter	Deltaic reservoirs
Author	Mike Shepherd
Link	Web page
PDF	PDF file (requires access)
Store	AAPG Store

Figure 1 Photograph of the Lena delta, Russia. Courtesy of the NASA Web site. The delta is about 200 km (124 mi) across in this view. The photograph has been rotated such that north faces down the page. The lower diagram is a lithofacies map of the basal Ivishak Formation, Prudhoe Bay field, Alaska (from Tye et al.).

Deltas are major sites of sand and mud deposition. They contain significant volumes of hydrocarbons worldwide (Figure 1). Major petroleum provinces include the Niger Delta in west Africa, the Mahakam Delta in Borneo, the Caspian Sea, and the Maracaibo Basin in Venezuela.

Deltaic sediments often form complex reservoirs

Delta systems make heterogeneous reservoirs, typically with a jigsaw-puzzle to labyrinthine sediment geometry (Table 1). There may also be considerable structural complexity. Many rivers, particularly the larger ones, dump very large quantities of sediment into deltas on top of an unstable substrate containing mobile salt and/or shale. Salt deformation features and growth faulting are common in deltaic sediments, and these can result in numerous segmented reservoirs, such as in the Tertiary Niger Delta in west Africa.

Table 1 Factors influencing connectivity and reservoir development in deltaic reservoirs.

Characteristic	Favorable for reservoir development	Unfavorable for reservoir development
Growth faults common	-	Numerous sealing fault compartments

See also

• Eolian reservoirs
• Meandering fluvial reservoirs
• Braided fluvial reservoirs
• Siliciclastic shorelines and barrier island reservoirs
• Deep-water marine reservoirs
• Carbonate reservoirs

External links

find literature about Deltaic reservoirs

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