Oligocene to Pleistocene basin development and sequence stratigraphy in northwest Taiwan

Wei-Yi Chiu

Abstract

There are three metropolis, including over 300 million peoples living in the northwest Taiwan. For all these peoples’ security, understanding the history of structural geology in this area is very important. We concern not only about the structures but also the sequence stratigraphic formation. Because of the worldwide shortage of energy and reduction oftheemission of carbon dioxide, we need to explore new oil or gas field, and try to find suitable structure for the carbon dioxide storage. According to previous studies, oil and gas has migrated from the Oligocene to Miocene source rocks to the ancient deltaic sandstone and trapped under cap rocks in this area. Even if there is no energy’s here, we still can look for the stratigraphic traps for carbon dioxide storage.

After interpreting the seismic profile tieing with well log data, we map the lithology and structural distribution, and this results reveal the development of the northwest Taiwan foreland basin and previous basin type from stratigraphic records.

I interpreted two structural profiles from seismic section and correlated the lithological formations from Wuchihshan to Toukoshan Formation. We found find that all of the formations dip and thicken to the east. This represents that the center of basin were located at the eastern area from late Oligocene to Pleistocene. Forthermore I picked out some normal faults and thrust faults. The normal faults were formed during the extentional event in Miocene, and the thrust faults and folds have been formed during the orogenesis since late Miocene to Pleistocene.

Reference

Chiu, H.-T. (1967) Stratigraphic correlation of the subsurface formation innorthwestern Taiwan. Petroleum Geology of Taiwan, 5, 33-44.

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Chen, R.-C., Huang, S.-T., Shen, H.-C., Chi, W.-R (1994) The structural geology relating to petroleum habitats of the Kuanyin Uplift and its neighboring basins. Petroleum Geology of Taiwan, 29, 75-104.

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