Rifts and Passive Margins

Michal Nemčok is a research professor at the Energy and Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah and a visiting professor at the Energy and Geoscience Institute Laboratory at the Geological Institute SAV, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. He has performed structural and hydrocarbon evaluations in numerous rift settings, such as the Pannonian Basin system of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the Basin and Range of the western United States; the Bristol Channel Basin; the Central Basin, Democratic Republic of Congo; and the Salton Sea region in California. He has also worked in many passive margin settings, such as West India, East India, the eastern United States and Canada, the African margins of the Central Atlantic, the equatorial Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Guyana-Suriname Basin, Gabon and Cameroon, the Black Sea region and southeastern Brazil. The results of most of these studies have been presented in thirty-two articles published in refereed scientific journals and in two edited books. He is the co-author of Thrustbelts: Structural Architecture, Thermal Regimes and Petroleum Systems (Cambridge, 2005).

• 1. Basic description of structural styles in rift and passive margin settings, including extension directions and key structural elements; 2. Mechanics of rifting and transition to drift phases; 3. Determination of unstretched continental, thinned continental, proto-oceanic and oceanic crustal boundaries; 4. Determination of timing of rift and continental break-up events; 5. The role of lithospheric composition and compositional variations on evolving rift margin architectural development and on breakup locations; 6. The role of pre-existing anisotropy on structural styles of rifts and passive margins; 7. The role of syn-extensional deposition and erosion on evolving structural styles of rifts and passive margins and the effects of tectonics on deposition and erosional patterns; 8. Fluid flow systems associated with oceanic hot spots, oceanic transforms, continental transforms and rifts; 9. The role of pre-rift heat flow on thermal regimes of rifts and passive margins; 10. The role of structural and stratigraphic architecture on thermal regimes of rifts and passive margins; 11. The role of syn-rift deposition and erosion on thermal regimes of rifts and passive margins; 12. The role of deformation on thermal regimes of rifts and passive margins; 13. The role of fluid flow on thermal regimes of rifts and passive margins; 14. Introduction to hydrocarbons in rift and passive margin settings; 15. Models of source rock distribution, maturation and expulsion in rift and passive margin settings; 16. Models of reservoir quality distribution; 17. Sealing characteristics; 18. Models of hydrocarbon migration; 19. Trapping styles; 20. Hydrocarbon preservation; References; Index.

'This is a large, comprehensive reference book … best treated as an encyclopedia, providing a thorough, basic summary of the essential components of basin and hydrocarbon development, and as an extensive reference list that provides access to more detailed information if required. The author's breadth of knowledge is shown by the variety of examples drawn from rifts and passive margins around the world. The material includes sufficient descriptions, examples, and mathematical equations to convey the fundamentals of the concepts without bogging the reader down in unnecessary details. The text is dense, but well organized and comprehensible … I usually donate my review copies of books to the library immediately, but there is so much information in this book that it will reside on my shelf for a while yet.' Ray Wood, The Leading Edge