Authors: Paul J. Boucher, John C. Dolson, Philip D. Heppard, BP Houston and Jerry Siok, BP-Egypt.

Abstract: The Nile Delta is an emerging giant gas province with proven reserves of approximately 42 TCF with approximately 50 TCF yet to find.. This resource has more than doubled in the last three years, largely from successful deep-water exploration for Pliocene slope-channel systems.  Proven reservoirs vary in age from Oligocene/Early Miocene through Pleistocene.  Proven source rocks include Jurassic coals and shales and the Lower Miocene condensed Qantara Formation shales.  Additional source rocks may be present in condensed intervals of Cretaceous, Oligocene and Eocene age.

Following Tethyan rifting and opening of the Mediterranean in the Jurassic, prominent Cretaceous mixed clastic and carbonate shelf edges aggraded vertically along a steep fault-bounded shelf-slope break. This "hingeline" in northern Egypt exerts the fundamental control on reservoir distribution in Tertiary age strata.    In late Eocene time, northern Egypt was tilted toward the Mediterranean during regional uplift associated with the opening of the Gulf of Suez and Red Sea rifts.  Drainage systems shed reservoir quality sediments northward in a series of forced regressions. These regressions culminated in be-heading of the youngest deltas by subaerial erosion during the sealevel lowstand associated with the Messinian salinity crisis.  Early Pliocene transgressions deposited a thick sealing interval over the low-stand Messinian valley networks. Renewed deltaic deposition began at approximately 3.8 MA. 

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