Pakistan Structural Geology Notes

Axial Belt
The axial belt is a north-south trending mountain belt, comprising of Kirthar Belt (southern part)
and Sulaiman belt (northern part) running along the western margin of the Indus plains. This is
located along the presently active, western plate margin to the Indian subcontinent.
The Axial Belt, is a phenomenal physical expression which have developed in the form of low to
medium elevation mountains range (elevation from few tens of meters to about 3000 meters) and
hills in the western Pakistan. It has complex set of deformation systems which resulted due to the
transpressional deformation since the initial collision of the Indian subcontinent with Eurasia and the
Afghan microcontinent and we commonly refer in geological literature as Himalayan Orogeny.
Of the role of Axial belt in the petroleum exploration my comments are as follows.
Firstly, you need to understand that Axial belt is resulted due to the Himalayan orogeny which had
been actively in progress during Eocene to Miocene time and believed to be still in place, have played
significant role in oil bearing trap formation and brought in major deformation and uplifting of the
preexisting structures and sediments . Throughout the Indus Basin specially in the mountain belts or
in the uplifted belts such as Potwar-Kohat Plateau, Himalayan compression has been very effective in
the trap building and large surface anticlines.
Those large surface anticlinal fold where oil or gas have been found developed during those key
tectonic time. Namely, Dhulian, Balkassar. Khaur, Pindori, Adhi and many such fields in Potwar
Basin whereas Dhodak (in the Sia Koh Range of Sulaiman Range), Sui , Zin and Uch fileds (Mari
Bugti High near the southern part of the Sulaiman belt in the syntaxis), Mazarani, Bhadra, Bhit and
Sari-Hundi fields in the northern, central and southern Kirthar Range.
The uplifting has been responsible to bring two major changes in the land form
1) creating large positive areas and larger depressions along the margins of the positive areas
2) erosion; helps the transportation of large volume sediments to be deposited in the new formed
Sedimentation rates accelerated than usual rate and rapid deposition started to take place specially
in Miocene time; subsequently the source rock started to buried deeper and gets thermally mature
for petroleum generation. Ample analysis resulting due to the Burial and Basin modeling results have
demonstrated that process of the petroleum expulsion from the source rock was contemporaneous
in the Indus Basin during Miocene-Pleistocene.
As far as the reservoirs in the Indus Basin are concerned the majority of the reservoir s such as
Jurassic Datta Formation, Cretaceous Lower Goru, Ranikot Formation, Dunghan Formation,
Lockhart Formation, Sui Main Limestone, Choragli-Sakesar formations and Habib Rahi, are
unaffected as all of them were deposited well before the active Himalayan orogeny phase but the
development of the fracturing specially in the carbonates reservoirs take place during this time.
No role what so ever, I can assign for the deposition of the source rock (deposition of the lithology
Organic matter) related to the Axial belt but has a key role in the maturation and expulsion (as
described earlier)
Let me summarize what I have been trying to address the issues;
Axial belt has an important role in the building of the petroleum trap at or near the margins of the
Indus plain and inside the mountains belt system. At the same time the processes of uplifting and
massive erosion due to mountain building have provided 3 to 6 km thick sediments cover over the

source rock that buried it down to 4 to 10 km deep. The deeper burial has resulted source rock to be
thermally mature, the source after going through the process of transformation of kerogen to
hydrocarbon allowing migration to initiate and accumulate to the nearest trap.