Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

The Pohang Basin is located in Pohang City and adjacent coastal areas in the southeastern Korea. It has a sequence of 900 meters of Neogene marine sediments (Yeonil Group) while offshore basins in the East Sea, e.g., the Ulleng basin, is over 10 Km in thickness. An understanding of the marine Yeonil...

The Pohang Basin is located in Pohang City and adjacent coastal areas in the southeastern Korea. It has a sequence of 900 meters of Neogene marine sediments (Yeonil Group) while offshore basins in the East Sea, e.g., the Ulleng basin, is over 10 Km in thickness. An understanding of the marine Yeonil Group in the Pohang Basin may provide insights into the hydrocarbon potential of the offshore East Sea regions. Heulandite, smectite, dolomite, kaolinite and opal-CT are commonly found as diagenetic minerals in the Yeonil Group. Among these minerals, heulandite occurs as a main cement only in sandstones consisting of volcanic matrix, Smectite composition and diagenetic mineral facies such as heulandite and opal-CT may reflect that the Yeonil Group has undergone shallow burial, temperatures below about 60 degrees. This suggest that sandstones have experiened weak diagenetic alteration. In order to reconstruct the thermal history of the basin, apatite fission-track analysis was carried out. Aapparent apatite fission-track ages (AFTAs) exhibit a broader range of ages from 238 Ma to 27 Ma with mean track lengths in the range of $15.24\pm8.0$ micrometers, indicating that these samples had undergone significant predepositional thermal alteration. The Triassic to Cretaceous AFTAs seem In represent the timing of cooling of their sedimentary sources. Late Cretaceous mean AFTA $(79.0\pm8.0 Ma)$ on the Neogene Yeonil Group indicates that the Yeonil Group had not been buried deeper than 2km since its deposition. The organic matters of. the Pohang Basin remain in the immature stage of thermal evolution because burial depth and temperature were not sufficient enough for maturation even in the deep section of the basin.