Fluid flow reconstruction in hanging and footwall carbonates: Compartmentalization by Cenozoic reverse faulting in the Northern Oman Mountains (UAE)

In this paper, the diagenesis from either side of a major Cenozoic reverse fault in the Northern Oman Mountains is documented. Detailed petrographical and geochemical analysis of calcite-filled fractures in carbonate strata of Late Triassic and Early Cretaceous age in the hanging wall and footwall in Wadi Ghalilah reflect a different diagenetic history. In both hanging wall and footwall most of the fractures are pre-burial, extensional in origin, formed by a crack-seal mechanism, and the calcite vein infill has a host-rock buffered signature. In the hanging wall, the fluid responsible for calcite precipitation of these extensional fractures was a marine fluid at 60 °C. These veins predate deep burial and contractional tectonic deformation and consequently do not provide any information about syntectonic fluid flow. Neither do the pre-burial extension fractures in the footwall which are also host-rock buffered. The fractures post-dating the tectonic stylolitization in the footwall, by contrast, show evidence of syntectonic migration of saline formation waters at temperatures between 80 and 160 °C during contractional deformation. These fluids probably were sourced from the subsurface via the reverse fault, which acted as a fluid conduit. At the same time, however, this fault functioned as a permeability barrier towards the hanging wall, since no evidence of syntectonic fluid flow is present here. In this way compartmentalization of the hanging wall and footwall block was realized.