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The American Assoclatlon of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin

V. 59, No. 7 (July 1975). P. 1166-1175, 2 Figs., 2 Tables

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador1

TOMAS
FEININQEP
Quito, Ecuodor

AbahcI Large reserves of petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador are prawnt in sedimentory racks deposited on a continental h l f during the Cretaceous. The petroleum was not
genwoted in these rocks, but in the fino-grained terrigenous
c h i c sediments of a contemporaneous continental-rise
prism deposited in deeper water farther west. The rise sediments subsequently were metamorphosedand are now part
of the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera of the
Andes. At the beginning of deformation of the continentolrise sediments, caused by the onset of subduction during the
Maostrichtion, most of the petroleum in the northern part of
the prism was driven upward ond eastward porallel with
bedding. Thus much of the petroleum entered the shelf rocks
lotorally. More complex deformation of the continental-rise
sediments in the south prevented the escape of petroleum
there. The trapped petroleum subsequently was converted to
graphii by metamorphism. Quantitative wlculations show
that the proposed mechanism is rwronoble and, thus, may
have applications elsewhere and should be considered in
planning exploration for petroleum in racks deposited an
continental shelves. A single carbon analysis of metamorphic
rocks from the south end of the Eastern Cordillera suggests
that the graphite content also diminishes southward. If true,
this augurs well for the finding of oil in fields currently under
explorotion toward the east in Peru.

Tschopp (1953) wrote a splendid summary of


the geology of the Oriente of Ecuador based on
12 years of detailed but unsuccessful exploration
for petroleum by geologists of The Shell Company of Ecuador, Ltd. A decade later regional exploration again was undertaken, but by a dozen
companies new to the Oriente and each working a
smaller concession than that originally held by
Shell. On April 8, 1967, Texaco-Gulf completed a
producing well at Lago Agrio and discovered the
first of many large fields now in production in the
north Oriente (Fig. 1). Concomitant exploration
and test drilling by other companies in the southe m Oriente, within and peripheral to the area earlier studied by Shell, again were unsuccessful.
Tschopp (1953, p. 2345) and most petroleum
geologists currently at work in Ecuador ascribed
the source of the Oriente petroleum to bituminous shale and limestone (the Napo Formation;
see following) that are present east of the Andes.
Nevertheless, I shall show that these rocks are unlikely sources, and instead propose herein that the
oil was generated in and driven from a thick
prism of fine-grained clastic terrigenous sediments on the west, at the site of the present
Andes. These sediments subsequently were metamorphosed and now crop out as the schist, phyl-

lite, slate, and quartzite of the Eastern Cordillera


of the Ecuadorian Andes. If these metamorphic
rocks were the source of the petroleum, the outstanding anomaly of petroleum occurrence in
eastern Ecuador can be explained successfullynamely, the almost compleie restriction of peiroleum to the north Oriente. Correlative potential
reservoir rocks in the south Oriente, as thick as
those on the north-and with similar structural,
stratigraphic, and petrophysical characteristicscontain little or no petroleum.
Geologically, eastern Ecuador consists of three
parallel, approximately north-striking belts. From
east to west these are (I) the upper Amazon basin,
(2) the Andean foothills, and (3) the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes (Fig. 1).

Upper Amazon Basin


Stretching from the eastern border of Ecuador
west to the Andean foothills, the upper Amazon
basin is a vast rain-forest-covered area of relatively little local relief. Regional surface gradients
are east and southeast, and elevations on the eastern border of Ecuador are less than 300 m. The
area is drained by large consequent rivers, such as
the Napo and Pastaza (Fig. l), and countless
smaller tributaries of the Amazon.
Basement rocks of the eastern upper Amazon
basin are granulite-facies metamorphic rocks of
the Guyana shield. Nearer the Andean foothills
wells have penetrated younger basement rocks:
fossiliferous limestone and terrigenous clastic sedimentary rocks of the Permian-Carboniferous
~ a c u m aFormation, and volcanic and terrigenous clastic (chiefly continental) sedimentary
Q Copyright 1975. The American Association of Petroleum
Geologists. All rights reserved.

IManuscript rece~ved.June 17, 1974; accepted, October 31,


1974.
2Escuela Politecnica Nacional. Contribution no. I , Department of Geology, Escuela Politecnica Nacional.
My warm thanks go to Eugene Jarosewich, chief chemist, and
analysts J. Norberg and P. Brenner, of the Department of Mineral Sciences, Smithsonian Institution, for the chemical analyses. Geologic information helpful to me was graciously provided
by Ben Fassett of Cayman del Ecuador, Robert Canfield of
Texaco, and Britton Wherry. The lnstituto Geografico Militar,
Quito, provided cartographic help.

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador

rocks of the Jurassic(?) Chapiza Formation


(TSC~OPP,
1953, p. 23 10-2316).
The basement rocks in turn are overlain unconformably by shallow-water marine sedimentary
rocks of Cretaceous age, the basal Hollin Formation and the overlying N a p Formation. The Hollin of Albian-Aptian age (Tschopp, 1953, p. 231623 17; Campbell, 1970, p. 38) is composed of medium-grained, porous, white orthoquartzite with a
few shale partings. The thickness of the Hollin
shows little change, and through most of the Oriente ranges only from 84 to 136 m. The conformably overlying Napo Formation is of Albian to
Coniacian or Santonian age (Tschopp, 1953, p.
2317-2324; Campbell, 1970, p. 15). The middle
Napo consists of a uniform fossiliferous limestone (with shale partings) whose thickness ranges
from 78 to 91 m (Tschopp, 1953, Table 11); it is
overlain and underlain by shale and glauconitic
sandstone. Thickness of the entire Napo Formation ranges from 200 to 400 m. In the eastern
Oriente, the Napo thins and grades laterally into
a sandy facies indistinguishable from the underlying Hollin (Campbell, 1970, p. 15-16).
Fold structures in the upper Amazon basin are
broad warps. Basement faulting, chiefly Miocene
or younger, and related to the final uplift of the
modem Andes (Campbell, 1970, p. 22), has juxtaposed the Hollin and N a p Formations in many
places (Tschopp, 1953, Fig. 7).
The N a p Formation is overlain unconformably by a thick sequence of clastic, in part tuffaceous, poorly lithified, brackish-water to continental sedimentary rocks of Maestrichtian and
Tertiary ages. The basal part of this sequence is
the Tena Formation. Post-Tena rocks have been
given a profusion of local formation names. Tena
and post-Tena rocks thin from a maximum of
several kilometers in the west to 1,000 m or less at
the eastern border of Ecuador (Tschopp, 1953, p.
2325-2342).

Andean Foothills
A belt of uplifts, in part with complex structures, forms prominent but discontinuous ranges
that separate the upper Amazon basin from the
high Andes on the west (Campbell, 1970, p. 2729). These uplifts bring to the surface older rocks
that range from the pre-Macuma lower Paleozoic(?) Pumbuiza Formation in the Cutucu uplift
(Fig. 1) to the Napo Formation throughout the
foothills.
The uplifts which produced the Andean foothills are young structures and formed at the end
of the Miocene (Campbell, 1970, p. 22). Many are
bordered on the east by large reverse faults. Extinct volcanoes stand atop parts of the Napo

1167

uplift (Fig. l), culminating in Sumaco, a spectacular fresh composite cone 3,900 m high, 55 km
north-northeast of Puerto Napo.
Eastern Cordillera
The high Andes rise abruptly west of the foothills belt. The loftiest chain of the Ecuadorian
Andes is the Eastern Cordillera with summit elevations commonly in excess of 4,000 m. Most of
this cordillera is composed of pelitic and quartzose metamorphic rocks with steeply dipping foliation. These rocks are cut locally by intermediate
to silicic stocks and small batholiths. Parts of the
cordillera are crowned by active or dormant andesite volcanoes more than 5,000 m high.
All of the metamorphic rocks belong to the
greenschist facies. The presence of abundant garnet and chloritoid, the local occurrence of kyanite, and the absence of andalusite show that the
rocks belong to the Barrovian, or medium-pressure-facies series of regional metamorphism.
Rocks in the northern half of the Eastern Cordillera belong mainly to the upper greenschist facies. They consist principally of thoroughly recrystallized medium-grained mica schist. Rocks
of lower grade, such as weakly recrystallized
phyllite and slate, are present in a narrow belt
adjacent to the Andean foothills. A few kilometers south of the Banos-Puyo road (Fig. l), the
grade of the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern
Cordillera drops sharply and most are phyllite,
slate, and fine-grained quartzite not unlike those
adjacent to the foothills belt farther north.
An outstanding feature of the low-grade rocks
in the south is their abundance of graphite. The
dominant dark-gray phyllite and slate are sooty,
even coally; where weathered, they readily soil
the hands. Correlative rocks of higher metamorphic grade in the north are far less graphitic, light
colored, and with little obvious graphite. The contrast in graphite content of metamorphic rocks
from the northern and southern partsof the Eastern Cordillera is brought out in chemical analyses
(Table 1).
Ceologic Synthesis of Cretaceous-Tertiary of
Eastern Ecuador
The Hollin and Napo Formations were deposited in a shallow sea which transgressed from the
west. The source of the clastic sedifnents was the
deeply weathered Guyana shield on the east. The
limestone beds of the Napo Formation are chiefly
bioclastic rocks deposited during periods of diminished influx of terrigenous clastic sediments.
The shoreline zone of this sea is indicated by the
sandy facies of the Napo Formation in eastern
Oriente.

1168

Tom6s Feininger

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador

Torn& Feininger

Table 1. Noncarbonate Carbon Content (weight-percent) of


Metamorphic Rocks from Eastern Cordillera, Ecuador*
Sample

Location

Percent Carbon

1.
2.
3.

Saraurcu
Papallacta-Baeza road
Banos-Puyo road

0.13
0.33 average 0.25
0.30

4.
5.

East of Cuenca
San Lucas

::::

average 0.65

*Analysts: J. Norberg (1. 2. 4. 5) and P. Brenner (3). Department of


Mineral Sciences. Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C.
Samples listed from north to south (see Fig. 1): 1. Composite of 10
chips of schist from south and west of Saraurcu, Pichincha Province.
2. Composite of 35 chips of schist and phyllite from cuts in road
from Papallacta to Baeza. Napo Province. 3. Composite of 20 chips of
schist and phyllite from cuts in Banos-Puyo road between Banos and the
Rio Zunac, Tungurahua Province. 4. Representative sample of phyllite
from east of Cuenca, Morona-Santiago Province. 5. Composite of 20
chipa of phyllite from the San Lucas area, Loja Province.

The metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera are traditionally interpreted to be Paleozoic
and F'rcuunbrian(?) (Tschopp, 1953; Sauer, 1965,
p. 26; W c i o Nacional de Geologia y Mineria,
1969; Campbell, 1970, p. 25). The arguments
mustered to support the proposed antiquity of
these rocks are that they are metamorphic, structurally complex, and not in any way correlative
lithologidy with the relatively orderly sequence
of supposedly younger rocks of the upper Amazon basin farther east. This age interpretation is
here considered erroneous. Rather, I intend to
show that the parent sediments of the metamorphic rocks are contemporaneous with the Hollin
and Napo Formations. Similar suggestions have
been advanced by Liddle (in Liddle and Palmer,
1941, p. 14) and Faucher et al (1968, p. 46).
The traditional paleogeologic reconstruction of
eastem Ecuador during the time of Hollin-Napo
deposition has been to show ,the area of the present Andean foothills and upper Amazon basin as
a broad shallow seaway, bounded on the east by
the emergent Guyana shield, and on the west by
the similarly emergent Eastern Cordillera (Sauer,
1965, p. 66-61; Campbell, 1970, p. 14). A strong
argument against this interpretation is the absence of evidence indicating the proximity of land
on the west. In fact, the westernmost outcrops of
the Hollin and Napo Formations suggest that
they were deposited in deeper water than were
rocks of the same formations farther east. The
Hollin, for example, contains increasingly abundant shale partings westward, and the sandstone
bodies in the Napo Formation on the east are
replaced toward the west by shale and limestone
(Campbell, 1970, p. 15-16).

A more likely paleogeologic reconstruction


(Fig. 2A) is that the Hollin and Napo Formations
were deposited in a shallow continental-shelf sea
with a shoreline only on the east, next to an emergent Guyana shield. On the west, roughly coincident with the base of the present Eastern Cordillera, lay a shelf edge beyond which, in the deeper
waters of an open ocean, was deposited an enormous volume of fine-grained temgenous clastic
sediment as a continental rise prism, or miogeocline in the sense af Dietz and Holden (1966).
During the time of Hollin and N a p deposition,
the coast of this part of the South American continent was of the "Atlantic type," in which the
continental plate underlying the shelf was coupled to and moving with the adjacent oceanic
plate. Stable shelf-rise conditions were terminated
abruptly during the Maestrichtian by the decoupling of the continental and oceanic plates, the
onset of subduction, and the creation of a Benioff
zone dipping eastward from a trench in the west,
at the site of the present Western Cordillera of the
Ecuadorian Andes. The sediments of the continental-rise prism overlying the Benioff zone were
deformed and subsequently metamorphosed in
response to the rise of isogeothermal surfaces
(Fig. 2B). In early Tertiary time the location of
the trench shifted westward, probably to its present offshore location. In the Oriente of Ecuador,
the depositional record of this orogeny is the eastward-thinning wedge of Maestrichtian and Tertiary tuffaceous, brackish-water and continental,
terrigenous clastic sedimentary rocks beginning
with the basal Tena Formation. These rocks are
an exogeosynclinal wedge, or back-arc deposit
shed eastward from the erosion of a rising volca-

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador

1171

FIG. 2--Schematic cross sections along line A-B of Fig. 1: (A) at close of Napo deposition; (B) at beginning
of Tena deposition; (C) at close of Tena deposition. Symbols: hachures, continental basement; x's, oceanic
basement; ruled and dotted, sediments and metamorphic rocks (in C) of continental-rise prism; black, Napo
Formation excluding sandy facies; blank, Hollin Formation and sandy facies of Napo; crosses, intrusive rocks;
checks, volcanic rocks; dotted, Tena Formation and equivalent sediments shed westward; upper fine line, sea
level; heavy line, 250C isogeotherm. Note: Benioff zone greatly oversteepened because of vertical exaggeration
of sections.

nic orogen-the
first vestige of the modem
Andes-at the site of the present Eastern Cordillera (Fig. 2C).
Recent findings from the Cuenca basin in the
high Andes of southern Ecuador strongly support
this proposed series of events. Here, Bristow
(1973, p. 1I) traced without interruption the lateral passage of fine-grained schist and phyllite of
the Eastern Cordillera into pelitic and sandy, turbiditic, sediments of the fossiliferous Upper Cretaceous Yunguilla Formation. The Yunguilla here
is interpreted as the distal western part of the continental-rise prism that was pushed eastward during telescoping of the prism that accompanied deformation and metamorphism (Fig. 2C).
Geologic mapping farther west is less detailed.
East of Cuenca, however, passage of the Hollin

and Napo Formations into low-grade metamorphic rocks at the base of the Eastern Cordillera
appears gradational (Faucher et al, 1968, p. 46;
Rudolph Trouw, written commun., 1974). Significantly, no geologist during more than one-half
century of exploration for oil has reported rocks
of either the Hollin or Napo Formations lying
unconformably on metamorphic rocks of the
Eastern Cordillera.

ORIGIN
OF PETROLEUM IN THE ORIENTE
The petroleum fields of the Ecuadorian Oriente
are entirely in the north (Fig. 1). Preliminary estimates of in situ oil (Table 2) show that 98 percent
are north of lat. 1"S. Most production is from the
top of the Hollin Formation, although the sandy
facies of the Napo is the chief producer in the

Tom& Feininger
Table 2. Estimated i n s i t u O i l i n Oriente of Ecuador
( b i l l i o n s of b a r r e l s ) *

Proved

Probable

Total

% of Total

North of l a t . 1S.

3.948

2.744

6.692

98

South o f l a t . 1s.

0.013

0.128

0.141

3.961

2.872

Total

6.833
100
- .-. - ..-- ---

* D i r e m i o n General d e Hidrocarburos, Q u i t o .

eastern fields. Rocks older than the Hollin and


younger than the Napo are barren.
Inadequacy of Napo Formation as Source Rock
The Napo Formation is cited repeatedly as the
source of the Oriente petroleum. It is an attractive
candidate, being composed of bituminous shale,
sandstone, and richly fossiliferous dark limestone.
Most freshly broken samples of limestone or
shale from the Napo emit a strong smell of petroleum, and nodules of asphalt are widespread. Impregnation of Napo sandstone by asphaltic oil is
common. Moreover, the Napo is present in all
fields of the Oriente of Ecuador.
Nevertheless, the Napo is an unlikely source
rock. In the north Oriente, nearest the large petroleum reserves, Napo limestone and shale beds are
especially rich in oil. They are so saturated that it
is unlikely that they ever could have held more
oil. Rather than being a source rock, they constitute an impermeable and unexploitable reservoir
rock. Moreover, if the Napo was the source rock,
migration of oil into the underlying Hollin Formation would have been downward. This would
be very unlikely in these water-saturated formations. Normal upward migration of oil would
have produced saturation in at least the lower
part of the Tena Formation. The Tena, however,
is nearly barren throughout the Oriente (Robert
Canfield, personal commun., 1974). A critical
evaluation of these observations leads one to discard the Napo Formation and look elsewhere for
the source of the Oriente petroleum.
Graphite in Metamorphic Rocks of Eastern

Cordillera
The low-grade metamorphic rocks in the south
of the Eastern Cordillera are richly graphitic. The
origin of the graphite is enigmatic. A vegetal origin is doubtful, because a continental rise far
from land is an unlikely environment for the accumulation of plant remains. Also, my own
searches during the past six years have failed to
reveal a single plant fossil. The graphite in these
rocks is uniformly distributed as microscopic dust
along foliation and parallel bedding planes.

Graphite content varies markedly only across


bedding.
The absence of plant fossils and the distribution of the exceedingly fine-grained graphite lead
me to the conclusion that the graphite represents
a petroleum residue once contained in the sedimentary precursors of these rocks. Metamorphism destructively distilled the petroleum, leaving only a graphite residue. The ability of
metamorphism to convert coal to graphite is well
documented (Quinn and Glass, 1958).
Spatial Distribution of Graphitic Metamorphic
Rocks and Petroleum in the Oriente
Known oil reserves (Table 2) and producing
fields (Fig. 1) are present only in north Oriente,
almost entirely north of lat. 1"s.From the Colombian border to somewhere south of the Banos-Puyo road (lat. 1"25'S), the metamorphic
rocks of the Eastern Cordillera are relatively poor
in graphite. Farther south, the metamorphic rocks
are markedly graphitic and on the average contain two and a half times more graphite than
those in the north (Table 1). The petroleum reserves of the Oriente are exclusively in the region
east of graphite-poor metamorphic rocks.
Proposed Mechanism
Petroleum was generated contemporaneously
with or closely following deposition throughout
the entire fine-grained sequence that constituted
the continental-rise prism. This is the basic premise of my proposed mechanism of origin,3 and it is
strongly corroborated by observations made in
the Cuenca basin. Here, the distal western part of
the continental-rise prism, which escaped metamorphism, is exposed as the Yunguilla Formation. Many seeps of heavy oil are known in the
Yunguilla (Bristow, 1973, p. 36-37). It indeed
)In a paper that postdates the writing of the present manuscript, Dickinson (1974) proposed a somewhat similar mechanism to account for the accumulation of oil elsewhere. He suggested that late Tertiary continental collision in part induced
lateral migration of petroleum from distant source rocks to form
the prolific reserves of the Persian Gulf area.

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador

1173

would be unlikely that the only petroleum in a petroleum reserves of the Oriente are related spacontinental-rise prism would be at its oceanward tially so directly to the graphite-poor metamordistal end. On the contrary, the presence of petro- phic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera. The pore
leum in the distal part of the prism is considered fluids including the contained oil were in large
here as compelling evidence that petroleum oc- part expelled eastward from the continental-rise
curred throughout the prism prior to its meta- sediments into the Hollin Formation in the north,
morphism.
where the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern CorDuring the Maestrichtian the onset of subduc- dillera are relatively improverished in graphite. In
tion initiated deformation and raised pressures of the south, fluids were unable to escape and the
the pore fluids (oil and connate water) in the con- entrapped oil was converted to graphite upon
tinental-rise sediments. Where the initial defor- metamorphism.
A question to be answered is why the low-grade
mation produced relatively simple open folds, the
fluids were driven upward and eastward along rocks in the south are graphitic. Why, in this probedding, away from the trench. At the former posed mechanism, were pore fluids driven prefershelf edge, the fluids present in the lower part of entially from the sediments that today are the relthe continental-rise prism found easy access into atively higher grade metamorphic rocks in the
the correlative Hollin Formation. They entered north?
this porous formation laterally from the west and
The metamorphic rocks in the south are decidprogressively displaced eastward the connate wa- edly more intensely deformed than are those in
ter in the Hollin. Upward escape of fluids was the north. From the Banos-Puyo road north, folihindered by the largely impervious shale and ation and bedding generally are planar, whereas
limestone of the overlying Napo Formation. Oil in the south the rocks are so thoroughly crumpled
saturation of the Napo occurred later, caused by that structural attitudes other than axes of minor
slow upward permeation of oil from the underly- folds can be measured in very few places. It is the
ing Hollin. Fluids in the stratigraphically higher relatively greater degree of deformation of the
part of the continental-rise prism were not able to rocks in the south that there impeded the escape
enter the correlative Napo because of the im- of pore fluids. Two possible causes for this
permeability of that formation. Here fluids were inequality of deformation north and south come
concentrated in the continental-rise sediments to mind.
just west of the shelf edge.
One may have been that subduction and deforAs deformation of the continental rise prism mation began in the north, to quicken later in
proceeded, folds became tighter and beds increas- pace and migrate southward. Rocks in the north
ingly were crumpled and broken by faults. Fur- thus would have had a longer metamorphic histother migration of fluids was now impossible. Si- ry and achieved a higher grade than those in the
multaneously, isogeothermal surfaces over the south prior to the seaward jump of the trench in
subjacent Benioff zone rose, and increasingly de- the early Tertiary. Initial deformation of rocks in
formation was accompaliied by metamorphism. the south therefore would have been more intense
Petroleum in the fluids which were unable to es- and accompanied by more faulting than would
cape was distilled destructively to leave a graphite have been true for rocks in the north.
residue. The concentration of oil in the continenAnother cause of the more intense deformation
tal-rise sediments that abutted the impermeable of the metamorphic rocks in the south could have
N a p Formation left particularly abundant resi- been the influence of the Canonaco arch (Campdues of graphite upon metamorphism. One such bell, 1970, p. 8). This broad, deeply buried, baseremarkable "graphite muck" has been noted by ment swell protrudes westward from the Guyana
Britton Wherry (oral commun., 1974) between the shield to impinge on the Eastern Cordillera a few
westernmost outcrops of the N a p Formation kilometers south of Puyo (Fig. 1). The arch may
and schists of the Eastern Cordillera in the Rio have offered greater mechanical resistance during
Antisana, located 30 km northwest of Puerto deformation than was offered by basement rocks
N a p (Fig. 1).
under the continental-rise prism sediments farWhere the onset of deformation of the conti- ther north. Forced against a relatively unyielding
nental-rise sediments produced not simple open basement, the continental-rise sediments in the
folds, but complex folds and myriads of small south would have been more intensely deformed
faults, migration of fluids was not possible. With than those farther north. Also, if the arch is rethe onset of metamorphism, the oil contained in flected at depth by a root, the greater thickness of
the fluids was destroyed and left a uniformly dis- basement under the arch could have partly insulated the overlying rocks from the rise of isopersed graphite residue in the rocks.
Clearly, it is no coincidence that the prolific geothermal surfaces during subduction. This

1174

Tom& Feininger

would account for the relatively low grade of the


metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera in
the south.

Quantitative Calculations
To be considered seriously, the hypothesis proposed here must be quantitatively reasonable. A
few simple calculations show that it is.
The proved and probable oil reserves of the
Oriente are 6.833 x 109 bbl (Table 2). The average API gravity of Oriente oil is 30" (Direccion
General de Hidrocarburos, @to, oral commun.).
At 100F, the density of the Oriente oil is 0.8618
g/cc (Levorsen, 1954, Tables A-3, 8-14). The
weight of the reserves is therefore 9.36 x I@ metric tons.
Little or no petroleum is known in south Oriente. I assume therefore that the graphite content
of the metamorphic rocks south of the BanosPuyo road, 0.65 percent by weight (Table I), is
the residue of an initial petroleum content representative of the entire continental-rise prism
north to the Colombian border. The average carbon content of the metamorphic rocks from the
Banos-Puyo road north is only 0.25 percent by
weight (Table I), a difference of 0.40 percent.
Each cubic kilometer of metamorphic rock in the
north thus contains 1.076 X 107 metric tons less
carbon than in the south (average measured rock
density 2.69 g/cc). If one assigns the difference to
oil with 85 percent carbon (Mason, 1966, p. 238)
that was lost by being driven out toward the east
during deformation of the continental-rise sediments prior to metamorphism, each cubic kilometer of carbon-depleted metamorphic rock is the
source of 1.266 x 107 metric tons of oil. The oil
reserves of the Oriente thus can have come from
only 73.9 cu km of metamorphic rock as now exposed in the Eastern Cordillera from the BanosPuyo road north.
Metamorphic rocks underlie 720 sq km of the
Eastern Cordillera between the Banos-Puyo road
and the Colombian border (Servicio Nacional de
Geologia y Mineria, 1969). At first glance, the
source rock here proposed appears overly prolific; the volume of rock required, integrated over
the area of outcrop, is a layer only 103 m thick. It
must be kept in mind, however, that the reserve
figures (Table 2) are but a fraction of the total
amount of petroleum involved. For example, the
figures exclude the tens of millions of tons of asphalt that impregnate the Hollin as economic deposits in outcrops on the Napo uplift in the vicinity of Puerto N a p (Britton Wherry, unpub. rept.).
The figures also exclude the rich but noneconomic oil impregnation of the Napo Formation that
underlies 20,000 sq km of the western Oriente
north of lat. 1S. If the petroleum content of this

250-m-thick formation is only 0.5 percent by


weight, a conservative figure based on field observations, its petroleum content would be 67.25 x
109 metric tons (using the same densities for rock
and oil as above). This is more than 70 times the
reserves given in Table 2. Furthermore, a sigdicant part of the oil driven eastward in the continental-rise prism was blocked by the impermeable Napo Formation. Much of this oil was
destroyed by metamorphism to leave graphite
masses like that exposed in outcrops along the
Rio Antisana, but perhaps the greatest part escaped upward along faults and fractures to be
lost at the surface.
The total amount of oil yielded by the continental-rise prism in the north is probably more
than 100 and may exceed 250 times the calculated
reserves of oil in the northern Oriente. The thickness of the metamorphic rocks required as a
source for these quantities of oil, integrated over
the area of outcrop in the northern Eastern Cordillera, is between 10.3 and 25.5 km. The thickness of the metamorphosed continental-rise prism
prior to erosion probably was between these values. The absence of andalusite in the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera and the local
presence of kyanite show that at least 20 km of
rock have been removed by erosion subsequent to
metamorphism (Miyashiro, 1973, p. 72). Part of
that cover was composed of volcanic-arc rocks,
but the great thickness of the metamorphic rocks
themselves is evident. The possibility that they
are the source rocks of the petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador is firmly established.
The geologic events leading to the accumulation of petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador in all
likelihood occurred elsewhere. In the search for
petroleum in rocks deposited on continental
shelves, the nature and composition of the associated continental-rise sediments, be they metamorphosed or not, must be evaluated critically in
planning exploration.
Southernmost Ecuador and neighboring Peru
may yield an interesting test of the ideas set forth
here. Somewhat southeast of San Lucas (Fig. 1)
the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera
increase in grade and become less graphitic, like
those from the Banos-Puyo road northward. A
chemical analysis of a composite sample of phyllite and schist from the road between Loja and
Zamora shows a carbon content of only 0.19 percent by weight.4 This value is similar to the carbon content of the metamorphic rocks in the
4 ~ n a l y s t J.
: Norberg, Smithsonian Institution.

Origin of Petroleum in the Oriente of Ecuador

north (Table 1). South of the Loja-Zamora road


the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera
are not very accessible and have not been studied.
Should they maintain a low graphite content, it
would favor the hypothesis that it was the influence of the Conanaco arch that prevented the escape of pore fluids east of Cuenca and at San
Lucas.
East of Zamora the international border is in
the Andean foothills, and the upper Amazon basin is in Peru, south of the Ecuadorian border.
Here in the basin, the Capahuari, Shiviyacu, and
Trompeteros fields are currently under exploration. The diminished graphite content of the
metamorphic rocks on the west, a speculative observation based on a single analysis, augurs well
for the discovery of economic reserves in these
fields.

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