Exploring the Northern Red Sea – Using Geological Insight and Advanced Geophysical Technologies to Build an Integrated Earth Model for Exploration

Abstract The northeastern Red Sea is part of an active northwest-southeast trending extensional rift basin positioned between the African and Arabian plates. The tectonostratigraphic evolution of the northern Red Sea is largely controlled by phases of differing Arabian plate motion with respect to Africa, which include initial rifting (N55E, ~3.5 mm/yr), initiation of the Dead Sea/Gulf of Aqaba (DSGAT) transform, cessation of rifting in the Gulf of Suez (N20E, ~8.5 mm/yr) and initiation of sea floor spreading and opening of the Gulf of Aqaba (N40E, ~7 mm/yr). Each change in plate motion is characterized by a distinct change in structural orientation and associated sedimentation. Regional geologic studies and tectonic reconstructions suggest rifting initiated in the northern Red Sea during the early to middle Oligocene (~27-30 Ma). Rifting initiation extended from the Gulf of Aden in the south through the Gulf of Suez and into the present day Nile Delta. In the northern Red Sea, the Arabian plate was moving at approximately 3.5 mm/yr along N55E with respect to Africa; this orientation remained consistent throughout the initial 12-15 million years of rifting. Extension was primarily accommodated along northwest-southeast trending normal faults oriented perpendicular to the regional plate motion direction. Movement along the extensional faults was transferred by northeast-southwest and east-west trending oblique slip faults. Reactivated basement faults of variable orientation also accommodated and transferred extension. The orientation of these structures is consistent with geologic studies of the Gulf of Suez suggesting a common structural evolution for the northeastern Red Sea from 30 to 15 Ma.