Hydrocarbon generation conditions and exploration potential of the Taoudeni Basin, Mauritania

The Taoudeni Basin is a typical and steady intracratonic basin in Mauritania,northwest Africa.There are six sets of potential source rocks and five regional unconformable surfaces of the Infracambrian and Paleozoic developed in the basin.We used seismic stratigraphic correlation to recover the denudation thickness of formations at a particular well location.Studies of the hydrocarbon generation history of the basin illustrate that hydrocarbon migration and accumulation occurred in the end of the Carboniferous,and after that,the whole basin suffered denudation for a long period of time.Because there is no thick Mesozoic overburden in the basin,the Silurian source rocks could not generate hydrocarbon in the Mesozoic era for the second time.Consequently,the prospects for successful hydrocarbon exploration in the basin are not good.