Paper submitted to 2nd EAGE/SBGF Conference on Deepwater Brazil Equatorial Margin, by Yermek Balabekov (TGS)
Summary
Recent world-class discoveries along the conjugate West African and Guyana margins have renewed interest in the South American Equatorial Margin. As a result, Petrobras and industry partners have prioritized this region within their exploration portfolios. The offshore Brazilian Equatorial Margin (EQM) comprises the Foz do Amazonas, Pará-Maranhão, Barreirinhas, Ceará, and Potiguar sedimentary basins and remains one of the last underexplored offshore regions of the country. Given the vast extent of the EQM, a comprehensive review of its prospectivity is beyond the scope of a single paper. Therefore, this abstract focuses specifically on the prospectivity of one of them - the Ceará Basin.
Despite limited drilling, notable offshore wells within the sector include Pecém, Amontada, and Canoa Quebrada, confirming the presence of effective source, reservoir, and trap elements. Additional legacy wells encountered good-quality reservoirs and hydrocarbon shows but were not commercial at the time. This paper presents an integrated seismic screening approach aimed at identifying and de-risking stratigraphic and structural leads beyond the drilled areas, providing encouragement for continued exploration and future discoveries in this frontier basin.