Undiscovered Oil and Gas of the Nile Delta Basin, Eastern Mediterranean
Introduction
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Nile Delta Basin Province as part of a program aimed at estimating the recoverable oil and gas resources of priority basins around the world. The province encompasses approximately 250,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean area (fig. 1). It is bounded to the west by the approximate edge of the Nile Cone, to the north by the Strabo, Pytheus, and Cyprus Trenches, to the east by the Levant Basin Province boundary, and to the south by the approximate edge of compressional structures in northern Egypt (Robertson, 1998; Roberts and Peace, 2007), which also corresponds to the general updip limit of Neogene deltaic strata in Egypt. This assessment was based on published geologic information and on commercial data from oil and gas wells, fields, and field production. The USGS approach is to define petroleum systems and geologic assessment units and assess the potential for undiscovered oil and gas resources.