Paper Summary
The northern Siberia occupies a wide area with several sedimentary basins with high hydrocarbon potential. To the north from it there is the Laptev Sea rift basin which is believed to be one of the most promising offshore areas for hydrocarbon discoveries, but is very poorly studied due to absence of offshore wells and sparse grid of seismic lines. We believe that deciphering the tectonic history of the study area will be resulted in more accurate interpretation of offshore seismic data, and here we present the main results of our structural studies. We interpret widely distributed pre-Jurassic unconformity as a result of extensional tectonics with a set of normal faults and some block rotation. The main compressional event occurred in late Mesozoic, overprinted previously formed extensional structures. Post-orogenic small-scale normal faults have been identified throughout the study area. The latest extensional event is represented by regular system of north-south-trending joints which are sub-parallel to normal faults forming the Laptev Sea rift system to the east from the study area. We interpret the north-south-trending joints as the western continuation of the Laptev Sea rift system.
