Petroleum Systems and Exploration Plays of Offshore Kuwait

Abstract An update of an internal study of regional Jurassic and Cretaceous petroleum systems of Mesopotamian Basin that incorporated recently published cluster analyses correlations of source rocks to trapped oil families, reprocessed regional seismic surveys, and stratigraphic correlations of wells, fields and discoveries by current and past operating companies in offshore sectors of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabian-Kuwaiti DZ at the northern Arabian Gulf (Figures 1A and 1B). The study aims at integrating the updated parameters of the proven regional petroleum systems, and recently reprocessed seismic anomalies with the structural evolution of offshore Kuwait in order to identify regional play fairways and delineate their trends and seismic stratigraphic analogues in Offshore Kuwait. We supplement the discussion with examples from a Regional Data Set of more than 20,000 km of high-quality 2D seismic data from the eastern side of the Northern Arabian Gulf (Figures 1A and 1B) complemented by well information and published geological information. The goal is to assess the usefulness as well as limitations of regional using analogues in future exploration offshore Kuwait.