Prof. Hisham Abd al-Razzaq al-Shaker Zahra :: Publications:

The main targets of this study include: outlining the geological set-up and the structural features affecting the basement rocks and the overlying sedimentary cover, studying the configuration of the basement surface, throwing more lights on the tectonic elements and locating promising locations for hydrocarbon accumulations. The Bouguer map is qualitatively and quantitatively interpreted. The analysis of the detected tectonic lineaments illustrates that the area is affected by five tectonic trends namely; Suez (N35-45W), East African (N-S), Aqaba (N15-25E), Tethyan (E-W) and Najd (N55-65W) arranging in their abundance ratio. Separation of the residual anomalies from the regional ones is applied using, nine points, second vertical derivative, vertical (upward and downward) continuation in addition to the leastsquares polynomial techniques. They show that the area contains positive and negative anomalies changed with the depth levels. The optimum depth of separation is at 3km. The depths to basement rocks are estimated using spectral analysis technique, 16 drilled wells reached the basement complex as well as 70 drilled wells reached the Nubia Formation. The basement depth is greatly varied allover the area, it ranges from 3 to 6 Km in the main basins inside the offshore part. The eastern and western shoulders of the Gulf of Suez have generally shallow basement depth (from 1.5to 3 Km). Euler deconvolution technique is applied to locate the step-faults and to determine their depth for gravity data. Moreover, two- dimensional modeling (2D) along two profiles is carried out to show the subsurface basement, Conrad and Moho discontinuities configurations.Further, a tentative basement structural map is constructed using all interpreted results of regional-residual separation of gravity data. This map shows the main lows and high blocks allover the area. It is greatly affected by a number of normal and step-like faults, resulting a great number of faulted blocks, forming a number of horsts and grabens which exhibit also the main trend affecting the area (NW). Finally, these highs and lows are intersected by four transform faults trending in a NE direction.