East Africa Rift System

My work on the East African Rift System (EARS) has involved both industry and academic activities. 

 In the decade after the oil discoveries in Uganda’s Lake Albert, industry interest in the EARS, increased dramatically and led to major discoveries in Kenya. More recently, interest and activity have declined. My most recent exploration work was for Swala in the Pangani and Kilosa-Kilombero rifts in Tanzania and the Nyanza Rift in Kenya.  We used heritage magnetic and gravity data to define the depocenters and then explored those areas with seismic reflection profiles. None of the rifts have yet been drilled.  Andy Roberts, then at Sothern Geophysical Consultants, of Perth, WA, did a detailed poster presentation on the Tanzania rifts at the 2015 AAPG ICE in Melbourne, Australia. It can be downloaded below.  

 My exploration work in Ethiopia has been in basins outside the EAR, but I did write a paper about the   as a contribution to the Geophysical Observatory of Addis Ababa University 50^th Anniversary Conference in 2007. Colour versions of most figures are available in the conference presentation.

 In April 2016 I made a presentation to the Geological Society of London’s conference on East Africa using a sequential series of maps to show the progressive tectonic and magmatic development of the entire rift from Mozambique to the Red Sea. This presentation developed into a paper called Re-imagining and re-imaging the development of the East African Rift, published in the February 2018 edition of Petroleum Geoscience.   

Attachments

Ethiopian Rift oil potential - 2007 Presentation — 2.3 MB PDF File Download
The Hydrocarbon Potential of the Ethiopian Tertiary Rift Basins — 1.5 MB PDF File Download
Potential fields - Tanzania rift exploration — 1.4 MB PDF File Download
Re-imagining and re-imaging the development of the East African Rift, 2018, Petroleum Geoscience, 24, 1, 21-40. — 4.3 MB PDF File Download