Sintesis De Las Cuencas Productivas De Hidrocarburos En El Noroeste De Argentina

The North West of Argentina (NOA) is divided in four main geologic provinces from west to east in the following order: Puna, Cordillera Oriental, Sierras Subandinas and Planicie Chaquena. The last two ones are important for oil industry and have the biggest fields in the region. Most of the activities in the area focus on exploration and gas field development in long anticlines structures orientated NNE-SSW (Subandino), and on the development of big and small oil fields in the Planicie Chaquena. The Tarija (Paleozoic) and Cretaceous basins are the main ones present in the NOA. With a common tecto-sedimentary history in Bolivia and in the north of Argentina, the Tarija Basin has most of the hydrocarbon fields discovered in the area. The Devonian units are the main elements of the principal petroleum system for this basin in the subandean area. While Devonian Los Monos formation is the source rock, Huamampampa, cia and Santa Rosa formations are the main reservoir rocks. The Cretaceous basin is important to the hydrocarbon history of NOA because two big fields were found in the ‘60 and ‘80. After that, most of the work made in this intracratonic basin focuses on understanding different plays that were not as profitable as the earlier ones. In this Basin, the Cretaceous Yacoraite formation is the most important unit due to its characteristics as source and reservoir rock.