The External Thrust System in southern Italy: A target for petroleum exploration

In southern Italy the Apenninic-Maghrebian Orogen developed during the Neogene Africa-Europe collision as a regional-scale duplex structure. It shows an allochthonous hangingwall, widely overlying a mostly carbonate footwall, consisting of the External Thrust System. This formed since the Tortonian by the detachment of the sedimentary co-vers of the continental margins of the Africa and Adria plates. In the Southern Apennines the duplex geometry has favoured oil-trapping and fields have been detected in ramp-anticlines of the buried edifice. Similar geometries have been inferred in eastern and central Sicily. The reinterpretation of regional profiles in Sicily based on new field data defines deep-seated geometries showing several potential oil traps and the External Thrust System could represent a new target for petroleum exploration in the region.