Assessment of Thermal Maturity Trends in a Lower Paleozoic Source Rock Formation

The Arabian plate has been known by its west-east asymmetric lithospheric structure, expressing itself in distinct topography and geological patterns. The western portion of the plate, consists of the Arabian Shield, exhibiting buoyant and exposed basement, while the eastern portion belongs to the wider Western Gulf Basin (Fig. 1), hosting a variety of Phanerozoic basins, which were subjected to continuous subsidence and deep burial since the Late Proterozoic terrane amalgamation. This pronounced asymmetric surface geologic pattern has deep-seated thermal and physical drivers (Stern and Johnson, 2010), governing basal heat flow and heat distribution within the sedimentary column, which ultimately drives the thermal maturity pattern of the Lower Paleozoic Source Rock across the region. The main goal of this study is to highlight observed trends of the thermal maturity of Lower Paleozoic Source Rocks, and to discuss the primary causes for these trends within a smaller section of the Western Gulf Basin (Fig. 1). Burial history and heat flow modeling were utilized in this study based on temperature and pyrolysis data collected from around 37 wells across the study area of approximately 23,000 km2.