No, Brazil is not unique or unusual. The find was still on the continental shelf. The continental shelf is sedimentary rock. All oil is found in sedimentary rock because the nature of oil is sedimentary itself.

I think the word "subducted" is not the right word. Sedimentary rock can never be pushed under the basement rock because basalt is far heavier than granite or other continental rock.

When sedimentary rock is pushed into basement basalt, as is happening right now on the West Coast of the USA, it is the basement basalt that is pushed underneath the continental shelf.

The continental shelf can sink to lower depths but it never subducts. When continental drift pushes continental shelf into another continental shelf, you get mountains.

Ron Patterson

You're right -- this is a point everyone interested in energy should be aware of. I wasn't til now. Thanks!

How big does a chunk of rock have to be before buoyancy dominates. Clearly small bits of crust can get dragged down. But plate motions are from the mid ocean ridges towards the continental margins, so I wouldn't expect any oil oceanward of the trenches. Could enough relatively recent sediment accumulate in the trenches themselves?

Some trenches fill with eroded continental land mass from an adjacent mountain chain and create a subduction melange of sediments.

But if the subduction zone is active, these deposits do go under: so not really.

To get oil you need BASINS. these can form in a variety of ways, typically, the north sea is a failed rift valley that sunk and was subject to rapid burial. This failed rift was probably a first attempt at an Atlantic. (though maybe theories have changed a bit in the last 30 years...)

Oil in Brazil and its opposite numbers in West Africa, formed when the Atlatic Ocean was much younger and South America and Africa were a close fit, separated by a depositional basin.

As this early basin provided all the right ingredients: Organic matter - source rocks, Clastic reservoirs, Clay and mud and salt seals, and rapid burial to cook the kerogens.

Then , the Atlantic continued its split, giving continental crust and oil deposits on both sides of the Atlantic.

BTW: This is why the Canadians look on the Atlantic coast as do the Brits and Irish on the Atlantic Margin.

Just to add on to what MUDLOGGER said, some sediment does subduct in a trench, in fact this is called an accretionary wedge. Don't think of it as chunks though, the aspect ratio on sedimentary rock is more like a piece of paper than a "block". i.e. wide and flat. So typically in continental crust collisions sediments, like sheaves of paper, just crumple and form the Himalyas or get skimmed off like California and glued to the side of a continent (think what it would look like if Japan got stuck onto the side of Asia). But when you have oceanic plate subducting under continental plate, some of the sediment can get pulled under the continental plate alongside the denser oceanic plate.


I wouldn't think of an accretionary wedge as a good place to form oil, too much stuff getting smashed up and moving around. Although, just a cursory glance at google showed me this which seems to indicate that there is at least the possibility of oil deposits in them.

"just crumple and form the Himalyas or get skimmed off like California"

i think i understand what you are saying here, but it is my understanding and belief that the himalayas were created when two continents collided. i dont believe there is any similar collision anywhere on earth.

and i think your california example and hypothetical japan/asia collision represent islands, carried along on an ocean plate, colliding with a continent.

.....and, how can i view that tiny cia print on the document you cite ?

Deffeyes addressed the question of finding oil in the ocean bed beyond the shelves in his '01 book. He describes the necessary conditions for formation of oil, then states:

So now we have an agenda:an oil province has to contain organic rich source rocks, and the source rocks have to have been buried below 7500 feet but no deeper than 15000 feet. If these ingredients are not present, no amount of drilling is going to find oil. Here's an example: the sediments on the floor of the deep sea are about 3000 feet thick. Even if organic rich layers were present near the base of the sediments, they would not even be half way to the top of the oil window. This paragraph wipes out 60% of the earth's surface as a potential source for oil.

It would have to be some new-fangled kind of oil to have formed there I guess.

I read a blooomberg article 28 April

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aalWn.eJHGZk&refer=l...

"...Pumping oil from the Brazilian finds, parts of which are 32,000 feet (10,000 meters) below the ocean's surface..."

Obviously 32,000 feet is much deeper than "but no deeper than 15000 feet"

So how does that work then?

7500-15000 feet below the dirt surface, whether air or water lies above that.
32K feet of water may change the pressure/temperature map slightly for that deposit, but it is depth below the solid surface that most counts.

Thanks. I realised it would be the depth below the solid surface that mostly counted but thought it was around 7,000 feet deep but carelessly didn't mention that:-( so the water must be deeper then i thought.

Could enough relatively recent sediment accumulate in the trenches themselves?

To form oil? No, that would not work. The sediment needs to be primarily organic, as in phytoplankton. Then it must be buried deep enough at "coffee pot" temperatures and long enough to form oil. If such a trench, filled with dead organic matter happen to get subducted, the temperatures would be way too high and it would be buried way too deep. But it would not matter because the organic matter would simply decay and form methane gas long before it got a chance to subduct. The methane would either form hydrates or just bubble to the top.

Oil fields form from buried phytoplankton deposits in shallow seas from long periods of intense global warming. It then falls to the bottom of the sea where, because of climate and other conditions, little or no oxygen exist so it does not decay. It then gets buried by other sediment, deeper and deeper, then it eventually becomes oil and gas, seeps up until it is trapped by non porous rock. More to it than that of course but that's enough for here.

Ron Patterson

There was drilling deeper than 15,000 feet that discovered oil in offshore sedimentary basins. Water was less than half the weight of rock and salt was lighter than most rock. Although oil was found deeper than 20,000 feet below surface it have formed before more sediment piled on top and the earth's crust became compressed and lowered with the extra weight burden. The deposition of delta sediments offshore created a huge wedge of sediments that caused a trough in the basement rock as the rock had some elasticity or plasticity. Over millions of years rock layers were folded or bent. These troughs were huge synclines.

As for further offshore in the middle of the sea, there was less sediment and more basaltic basement rock without the thicker accumulations of organic sediments found near shore. It is not likely one will find hydrocarbons beyond the continental shelf areas. The oceanic crust subducted under the coast of Oregon contained sedimentary rocks and as the subducted rock sank towards the mantle these rocks melted and formed various volcanic and intrusive lavas containing more felsic and silica rich melts than the oceanic crust that subducted with the leucocratic sediments.