The Sirte Basin province of Libya; Sirte-Zelten total petroleum system

The Sirte (Sirt) Basin province ranks 13th among the world’s petroleum provinces, having known reserves of 43.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent (36.7 billion barrels of oil, 37.7 trillion cubic feet of gas, 0.1 billion barrels of natural gas liquids). It includes an area about the size of the Williston Basin of the northern United States and southern Canada (≈490,000 square kilometers). The province contains one dominant total petroleum system, the Sirte-Zelten, based on geochemical data. The Upper Cretaceous Sirte Shale is the primary hydrocarbon source bed. Reservoirs range in rock type and age from fractured Precambrian basement, clastic reservoirs in the Cambrian-Ordovician Gargaf sandstones, and Lower Cretaceous Nubian (Sarir) Sandstone to Paleocene Zelten Formation and Eocene carbonates commonly in the form of bioherms. More than 23 large oil fields (>100 million barrels of oil equivalent) and 16 giant oil fields (>500 million barrels of oil equivalent) occur in the province.

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