PETROLEUM SYSTEMS AND
PLAYS OF BORNEO AND PALAWAN
Richard W. Murphy
Weybridge, Surrey, UK
Nine major petroleum systems in the eight
significant basins of Borneo and Palawan contain 23-26 BBOE of
discovered hydrocarbons. Plays may be viewed as those containing major
fields (>50 MMBOE), minor fields (<50 MMBOE), plays that don’t work and
frontier plays. They may be further subdivided by trap type, basin
setting (delta sag or rift/sag), by reservoir (sandstone or carbonate)
and by environment (shelfal or turbidite).
The nine petroleum systems are:
- Middle Miocene to Pliocene sandstone
reservoirs in a variety of structural and structural-stratigraphic
traps in the Sabah Basin.
- Upper Miocene to Pliocene deltaic
sandstone reservoirs in shallow, faulted, four-way anticlines in the
Tarakan Basin.
- Oil and gas in very large quantities in long,
parallel, unfaulted north-south-trending anticlines in the Mahakam
Delta. Reservoirs are west-east-trending channel sandstones.
- Oil and gas in deep water Makassar Sea
outboard of the producing shelf with turbidite sands as the
reservoir and associated ponded deep water marine shales as the
source.
- Oil in upthrust anticlines in the Tanjung
Raya area of the Barito Basin
- Oil and gas from Cycle II and III
deltaic sandstone reservoirs in complexly faulted structures in the
Balingian Province.
- Huge amounts of gas and minor
amounts of oil from Cycles V and IV reefs and platform carbonates on
the Luconia Shoals microcontinent.
- Large reserves of oil and gas from Cycle V
and VI deltaic and turbidite reservoirs in the Baram and Champion
deltas in a variety of complexly faulted structural traps.
- Oil and gas in reefs flanking a
rift source basin on the North Palawan microcontinent.