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Regional Structural Style of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains: Jebel Akhdar, Saih Hatat, and the Northern Ghaba Basin

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Regional Structural Style of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains: Jebel Akhdar, Saih Hatat, and the Northern Ghaba Basin GeoArabia, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1998 Structural Style, Central and Southern Oman Mountains Gulf PetroLink, Bahrain Regional Structural Style of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains: Jebel Akhdar, Saih Hatat, and the Northern Ghaba Basin Van S. Mount, ARCO Roderick I.S. Crawford, ARCO Qatar Inc. and Steven C. Bergman, ARCO Exploration and Production Technology Company ABSTRACT Three quantitative regional transects across the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar anticlines in the Central and Southern Oman Mountains and the Northern Ghaba Basin have been constructed based on surface, well and seismic data. Interpreted large-scale structural geometries suggest that the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar anticlines are basement-involved compressional structures, underlain by north-dipping, high-angle, blind, reverse faults located beneath their southern limbs. A compressional deformation event initiated in the Oligocene (constrained by apatite fission track data) involving the high-angle reverse faults is interpreted in which pre-Permian strata and Permian-through-Lower Cretaceous strata, exposed in the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar anticlines, were parautochthonous - uplifted over the underlying reverse faults, and not displaced a great distance laterally. The allochthonous Hawasina and Sumeini sedimentary rocks and the Semail Ophiolite complex are interpreted to have been emplaced onto the carbonate platform during the Late Cretaceous, and have subsequently been parautochthonous during the Tertiary deformation. The upper portion of the pre-Permian section in the Ghaba Basin consists predominantly of a thick (>4 kilometers) sequence of Cambrian-through-Silurian, predominantly non- marine to shallow-marine, clastics of the Haima Supergroup. In contrast, out of the Ghaba Basin proper in the Central Platform or Musallim High region, the Haima Supergroup is generally less than 2 kilometers thick, and interpreted to thin to the north. The fundamental difference in pre-Permian strata exposed in the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar Anticline windows is the thick (>3.4 kilometers) section of Ordovician age, shallow-marine strata (Amdeh Formation) present in the Saih Hatat Anticline, but absent in the Jebel Akhdar Anticline. In our interpretation, the shallow-marine clastics exposed in the Saih Hatat Anticline represent the northern extension of the Early Paleozoic Ghaba Basin, which have been uplifted over a high-angle reverse fault in the Early Tertiary deformation event. The cross-section through Jebel Akhdar is located to the northwest of the Ghaba Salt Basin, along the Musallim High. In this area the thickness of the Ordovician strata deposited is interpreted to be less than in the Ghaba Basin. The Ordovician section is not present in the Jebel Akhdar structure - the thinned section likely eroded in a Late Paleozoic deformation event. INTRODUCTION The Oman Mountains are located on the southeast margin of the Arabian Plate. The mountains extend for over 700 kilometers (km) from the Musandam Peninsula to southeast of Muscat, varying in width from 30 km to greater than 125 km, and reaching elevations of up to 3 km above sea-level (Figure 1). Four major tectono-stratigraphic units have been recognized in the Central and Southern Oman Mountains (Figure 2). The oldest unit is a pre-Permian sequence correlatable to the Huqf and Haima Supergroups. The pre-Permian unit is unconformably overlain by Middle Permian to Cenomanian platform carbonates of the Hajar Supergroup. The third major tectono-stratigraphic unit is the allochthonous Semail Ophiolite Complex, including the Hawasina and Sumeini Nappes, which was emplaced onto the Hajar Supergroup platform carbonate sequence in the Late Cretaceous (Mann and Hanna, 1990). The youngest unit consists of Late Campanian-Maastrichtian to Tertiary sedimentary cover. 475 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geoarabia/article-pdf/3/4/475/4552843/mount.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Mount et al. The frontal thrust sheets of the Hawasina and Sumeini Nappes define the southern boundary of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains (Figure 1). The northeast-southwest trending Ghaba and Fahud Basins are over-thrust by the Hawasina and Sumeini Nappes (Figure 1). The large-scale structural geometry of the Oman Mountains and foreland is a topic which has received considerable attention in the last three decades. This study proposes a new, quantitative, structural framework for the Central and Southern Oman Mountains. The proposed structural framework is constructed using previous studies (Glennie et al., 1974; Michard et al., 1984; Hanna, 1990; Mann and Hanna, 1990; Cawood et al., 1990), updated geologic maps (1992-1993 BRGM, 1:250,000 scale series), updated industry data, new fission track thermo-chronology data, and a new model describing basement-involved foreland structures (Mitra and Mount, 1998). As with previous interpretations, this study does not solve all of the problems or answer all of the questions regarding the structural geology and evolution of the Oman Mountains. However, the interpretation does provide a relatively simple solution for the large-scale structural geometry of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains which honors the bulk of the observed structural relationships and provides a regional, quantitative, structural framework into which more detailed structural and stratigraphic studies can be incorporated. The proposed model for the structural configuration of the Central and Southern Oman Mountains is based on three regional, quantitative, structural transects. The transect locations are shown on the schematic geologic map of Oman in Figure 1. The north-south oriented cross-sections (Transects I and II) extend from the Batinah Coast, across the Central and Southern Oman Mountains, and into the foreland area south of the Hawasina deformation front. The southeast-northwest oriented cross-section (Transect III) extends from the Batain Coast, across the Huqf Arch, and across the Northern Ghaba Basin. In the proposed model, the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar Anticlines are interpreted as large-scale basement-involved compressional structures, underlain by north-dipping, high-angle, blind, reverse faults located beneath their southern limbs. The latest phase of compressional deformation involving the high-angle reverse faults is constrained as Oligocene by apatite fission track data (Appendix). The model proposes that pre-Permian strata and Permian-through-Cretaceous strata, exposed in the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar anticlines, were parautochthonous (uplifted over the reverse fault, but not displaced a great distance laterally) in the Tertiary deformation event. In addition, the allochthonous Hawasina and Sumeini sedimentary rocks and the Ophiolite Complex (which were emplaced onto the carbonate platform in the Late Cretaceous) are interpreted to have also been parautochthonous during the Tertiary deformation event. Although the structural style of the Jebel Akhdar and Saih Hatat structures is interpreted to be similar, the pre-Permian stratigraphy exposed in the structural windows generated by the Tertiary deformation event are different. In the proposed model the primary difference in the stratigraphic succession exposed in the windows is that Saih Hatat structure deforms the northern portion of the Ghaba Basin and associated basin stratigraphy and therefore exposes a different sequence of pre-Permian rocks at the surface than are exposed in the Jebel Akhdar window. STRATIGRAPHY Figure 2 shows a stratigraphic column, on the left (after the excellent summary by Droste, 1997), which is simplified in the column on the right, showing the stratigraphic color scheme used in the structural transects (Figure 3). Precambrian to Ordovician correlations proposed by Mann and Hanna (1990) are utilized, in which the Ordovician Mahatta Humaid Group, exposed in the Huqf Massif, correlates with the Amdeh Formation in Saih Hatat. The Nafun Group, exposed in the Huqf Massif, is interpreted to correlate with the carbonate and siltstone stratigraphy exposed in the Saih Hatat and Jebel Akhdar windows. In the transect interpretations, the stratigraphy beneath the Nafun Group is schematically represented with constant thickness and is meant to include the Abu Mahara Group, and the Mistal and Hatat formations. Correlation of these units from the Huqf Massif to the Jebel Akhdar and Saih Hatat structures is complicated and needs refinement. 476 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geoarabia/article-pdf/3/4/475/4552843/mount.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Structural Style, Central and Southern Oman Mountains 57° 58° 59° 25° GULF OF O OMAN N M B A A 0 100 N T IN M A Km H 24° O CO U AS N T ° T 24 A IN S Barka-1 Muscat Mistal Saih Hatat Window Window Kharus Jebel Window Nakhl Jebel Windows FRONT OF Akhdar HAWASINA & Wadi Amdeh SUMEINI 23° NAPPES Sahtan Window Saih Saiq SEMAIL GAP Hatat Window 23° Ibra Dome Wadi ndam Mi'aidin adi A W Fig. 4 Al-Hammah-1 Jebel Madmar-1 ARCO/ FAHUD PARTEX Jebel Madar SALT BASIN Block 32 Najah-1 Jebel Remlat Ja'alan Shabiyah-1 Al-Wahiba-1 22° Habiba-2 Afar South-1 22° Jebel Fayah-1 CENTRAL PLATFORM MUSALLIM HIGH OMAN AST HUQFFRONT ARCH OF BATAIN OPHIOLITE COMPLEX 21° BATAIN CO 21° GHABA SALT BASIN ARABIAN SEA Semail Ophiolite, Hawasina and Sumeini Complex Jurassic-Cretaceous Permo-Triassic 20° Cambro-Ordovician Subsurface limit of salt basins 20° Precambrian Huqf Supergroup SOUTH OMAN Precambrian Basement SALT BASIN SALT LIMIT GHABA BASIN 57° 58° 59° Figure 1: Regional location map of
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