Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Reggane Basin Province, Algeria, 2018

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) quantitatively assessed the potential for undiscovered, technically recoverable continuous (unconventional) and conventional oil and gas resources in the Reggane Basin Province of Algeria (fig. 1). The Reggane Basin is one of a series of North African basins that achieved much of their current structural configuration through late Carboniferous−Permian (Hercynian orogen) compressional deformation (Boote and others, 1998; Coward and Ries, 2003; Badalini and others, 2009). The basin is asymmetric with a steeply dipping, structurally complex northeastern margin associated with a sedimentary section that gradually thins and shallows to the southwest. Silurian and Devonian organic-rich shales are the major petroleum source rocks in the basin (Boote and others, 1998). Organic matter in both source rocks may have reached the thermal generation window for oil during Carboniferous burial; both source rock intervals reached the gas-generation window during the Late Triassic–Jurassic (Boote and others, 1998; Logan and Duddy, 1998; Makhous and Galushkin, 2003; Zuehlke and others, 2010; Jaeger and others, 2017). Only the southwestern margin of the basin remains in the oil-generation window (Arab and Djezzar, 2011). This assessment includes an evaluation of undiscovered continuous (shale oil, shale gas, tight gas) resources and conventional oil and gas resources.