Niger Delta Basin (geology)

The Niger Delta Basin is located in the Gulf of Guinea on the west coast of Africa.
Geologic map of the Niger Delta Basin and the Benue trough, and the oil fields in the region.

The Niger Delta Basin, also referred to as the Niger Delta province, is an extensional rift basin located in the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Guinea on the passive continental margin near the western coast of Nigeria[1] with suspected or proven access to Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Príncipe. This basin is very complex, and it carries high economic value as it contains a very productive petroleum system. The Niger delta basin is one of the largest subaerial basins in Africa. It has a subaerial area of about 75,000 km2, a total area of 300,000 km2, and a sediment fill of 500,000 km3.[1] The sediment fill has a depth between 9–12 km.[2] It is composed of several different geologic formations that indicate how this basin could have formed, as well as the regional and large scale tectonics of the area. The Niger Delta Basin is an extensional basin surrounded by many other basins in the area that all formed from similar processes. The Niger Delta Basin lies in the south westernmost part of a larger tectonic structure, the Benue Trough. The other side of the basin is bounded by the Cameroon Volcanic Line and the transform passive continental margin.[2]

  1. ^ a b Tuttle, Michele; Charpentier, Ronald; Brownfield, Michael. "The Niger Delta Petroleum System: Niger Delta Province, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, Africa". United States Geologic Survey. United States Geologic Survey. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
  2. ^ a b fatoke, oluwaseyi adedamola (2010). sequence stratigraphy of the pliocene-pleistocene strata and shelf-margin deltas of the eastern niger delta, nigeria (ph.d.). university of houston.