Near-shore marine and continental sediments of the Sirte basin, Libya

Abstract

At the end of the Cretaceous period the Sirte basin developed in North Africa between the Tethyan foredeep and the Sahara Shield. In-filling of the basin throughout the Tertiary era resulted in the deposition of a thick sequence of clastic rocks and carbonates with minor evaporites. The Sirte basin contains large quantities of oil and gas. This paper describes mixed carbonate and clastic Miocene shoreline deposits of a type which prevailed during much of the history of the Sirte basin. These rocks have been studied in the field using sedimentological logging techniques. Forty-seven detailed sections have been recorded totalling some 3000 m of sediment over an area of about 1500 sq km. Some 26000 field observations have been made. These have been used to interpret the depositional environments of these rocks by comparison with studies of recent sediments.