Deccan Trap and the geologic framework of the Cambay basin

The subsurface information gathered during exploration for oil and gas in the Cambay basin shows it as a deep graben with 5 km or more of Tertiary and Quaternary sediments resting on the Deccan Trap floor. The Trap floor of this graben extends from Lat. 24° N to about Lat. 19° N and possibly further south. The basin is divisible into separate morphotectonic blocks as a result of block differentiation in the Trap basement, reflected in the structural attitudes of the overlying sediments. This differentiation is believed to have originated in the Paleocene. The dominant structural grain of the area to south of the Narmada river is ENE-WSW with block faulting in the Traps along the older Satpura trend. North of the Narmada river, the trend is longitudinal upto the Meshwa river while further north the trends veer to a NNW-SSE alignment. These latter trends, in the greater part of the Cambay basin, were impressed early during its subsidence and are the result of reactivation along the old Dharwarian trends in post-Delhi times. Maximum thickness of the Traps penetrated so far is near Mechsana and Cambay where more than 1000 meters thickness has been drilled through. The drilling and gravity-magnetic evidence shows the thickness of Deccan Traps in this trough to be of the order of 2.5 km and points to the possibility of active subsidence of Cambay basin, concomitant with the outpouring of the basaltic lavas. The age of the Traps in the Cambay basin, as evidenced by the available data, is Upper Crealaceous. The influence of the structural grain of the basaltic floor on the overlying sedimentary sequence is evidenced during all the stages in the evolution of the Cambay Tertiary basin. Conglomerates, wackes and reddish brown clays of exclusive Trap derivation predominate in the sedimentary section in the initial stage of the basin evolution during Paleocene. General absence of well developed terrigenous reservoirs on a regional scale in the Paleogene section is due to predominance of Trap terrain as the provenance of clastic detritus, contributing essentially argillaceous matter.