This chapter starts with a review of the knowledge about petroleum generation, and its controlling mechanisms and factors. Then it follows with expulsion and its controlling mechanisms and factors. Subsequent discussion focuses on source rock richness and maturity characterization. The main portion of the chapter deals with source rocks in strike-slip terrains and transform margin settings, providing a number of worldwide examples.

This chapter starts with the introduction of heat conduction and its controlling parameters. It then describes the control of thermal regimes of transform margins and strike-slip terrains by a number of material parameters such as specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and radioactive heat production rate, which, together with their controlling factors, are described individually.

This chapter goes through a list of potential thermal regimes occurring prior to the development of the strike-slip setting or transform margin. These have a strong impact on the thermal regime among all controlling factors. This is due to the fact that the thermal regime affects the host continental lithosphere in many different aspects, such as its thickness, metamorphic reactions, melt formation, rheological zonation, and mechanical behavior. Following a brief summary of basic concepts of heat transport and generation, and heat flow presently observed at the Earth’s surface, the chapter discusses thermal regimes and temperature distribution with depth that can exist in continental lithosphere affected by transform margin formation. It sets the stage for the subsequent evolution, which is strongly dependent on the initial subsurface temperature field. Although this influence progressively diminishes as the transform margin evolves, the knowledge of pre-existing thermal regimes may also help to understand spatial variations along a specific transform margin segment and present-day differences between transform margins.

This chapter describes the effect of erosion and deposition on the thermal regimes of strike-slip and pull-apart terrains, and transform margins. It defines the significant deposition rate, which is faster than 0.1 mmyr–1, as exerting a noticeable cooling effect on the surface heat flow while a significant erosional rate has the opposite effect, resulting in advection of hotter material toward the surface. It support this discussion with examples from the East Slovakian and Vienna pull-apart basins in the Western Carpathians, Wasatch normal fault example from Utah, and offshore North Gabon and East Indian examples.

The chapter defines the top seal as a transient feature on the geological timescale. It divides seals into lithological and fault seals. The chapter goes through the physical apparatus controlling the behavior of various types of seals, all the main mechanisms involved together with their controlling factors, and finishes with an attempt to use case strike-slip and transform regions for describing the seals of these settings in a systematic way, trying to tie their variability to variations in the structural architecture of their respective settings.

This chapter discusses fluid flow mechanisms at strike-slip fault-related and transform margin-related settings. It focuses on the identification of specific fluid flow systems, and, subsequently, the determination of their role in the local fluid regime, as well as their migration pathways, time span of their activity, fluid sources, and their controlling factors. The discussion draws from the current literature on case studies, as well as numerical and analog models.

Many of the world’s continents are bounded, or traversed, by vast fault networks that move laterally, like the well-known San Andreas Fault. These strike-slip regimes are vitally important to the world’s natural resources – petroleum, water, and geothermal energy. This book covers all aspects of transform and strike-slip regimes: how they initiate, how they develop, and the natural resources associated with them. Numerous global case studies are utilized to illustrate structural development, thermal and fluid flow implications, and commercial applicability. The work aims to be useful to a broad range of readers, from students of geology and researchers specializing in strike-slip regimes to geoscientists and managers involved in the business of natural resources and energy solutions.

This chapter focuses on how the thermal evolution of transform margins is controlled by deformation related to ridge migration parallel to the margin, creating pronounced thermal perturbation. It draws from insights provided from the three-dimensional thermal finite element models using a kinematic boundary condition to account for sea-floor spreading center migration. The models are used to quantitatively investigate the complex spatial patterns and temporal changes in the thermal regime of the ocean–continent transform development stage and subsequent transform margin. The models demonstrate the consequences for the uplift history, structural style and crustal structure of a transform margin as lithospheric strength is strongly temperature dependent.

The chapter describes the development history and controlling dynamics of strike-slip faulting in various geologic settings, and its transition to continental breakup and the early drifting stage.

This chapter discusses the importance of fluid flow mechanisms described in Chapter 8 in controlling the local thermal regime of the strike-slip terrains and transform margins (i.e., determining the proportion of heat convection to heat conduction). It continues with an argument about how important it is to resolve the distribution of the primary fluid reservoirs in the system, fluid sources and sinks, fluid migration pathways, and the associated migration rates for the construction of a local quantitative thermal model or at least the appropriate use of a known analog in the qualitative way. This chapter places the fluid flow mechanisms described in Chapter 8 in the context of different tectonic settings and discusses how convective heat transfer controls their thermal regimes. It starts with discussion of oceanic and continental transforms, then pull-apart terrains, and ends with known active geothermal fields located in strike-slip settings and their characteristics.

This chapter discusses the spatial and temporal evolution of the sediment erosion and catchment in various strike-slip fault-related and transform margin-related settings. It documents that their study requires the use of 3D seismic imaging tied to a large number of wells, instead of a grid of reflection seismic profiles tied to wells. The chapter also focuses on the effects of tectonics and climatic forcing on the aforementioned deposition. Supporting studies include seismic- and well-based ones and studies constrained by millennium-scale continental margin deep-sea depositional rates and activity of sediment feeder systems.

This chapter starts with characteristics of matrix- and fracture-controlled reservoirs. Building upon Chapter 7, it focuses on a detailed discussion of depositional environments of strike-slip terrains and transform margins in an attempt to understand their potential for developing reservoirs capable of hosting hydrocarbons. The discussion includes details from several natural laboratories, such as the Vienna Basin in Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, representing the continental strike-slip settings and Equatorial Atlantic and Guyana–Suriname regions representing transform margins. The knowledge from these examples is combined with other case studies from the literature on these two tectonic settings. Although every margin and basin is unique, this chapter tries to explore the commonality within continental strike-slip and transform margin settings. This chapter focuses on their main depositional trends and their role in developing specific characteristic types of reservoirs to form a framework that can be applied to other continental strike-slip terrains and transform margins.

This chapter discusses the transform fault precursors, continental strike-slip fault zones, and the role of pre-existing anisotropy on their development. It focuses on the potential perturbation of their controlling dynamics and its effect on their structural architecture. The chapter contains a series of examples from failed and successful rift systems, helping to understand the role of different scales of pre-existing anisotropy. These examples serve to illustrate the wide variety of transform, transfer, and accommodation zones that may evolve as a result of crustal inhomogeneities during the activity of a controlling stress regime. They also show how the anisotropy zones manifest themselves in different ways, depending on the relationship between the type of anisotropy and the imposed slip vector.

This chapter subdivides the hydrocarbon migration into primary, secondary, and tertiary migrations. These are described as a multiphase fluid flow driven by petroleum fluid potential gradients. The primary migration represents the release of generated hydrocarbon molecules from the kerogen matrix when the sorptive capacity of the matrix is exceeded, often called expulsion by pressure-driven movement through the source rock matrix and transient microfractures. In the case of oil, the secondary and tertiary migrations represent a longer-range flow from source rock to reservoir and remigration from one accumulation to another, respectively. It takes place through a combination of carrier beds, faults, and fractures driven by the balance between fluid potential gradients that are created by buoyancy force, hydraulic gradient, capillary pressure and frictional resistivity force. Description of each force contains mathematical formulations. The secondary migration is described as including separate phase flow, diffusion, solution, and dissolution of gas in oil and water and chemical cracking. The discussion is supported by case studies from the literature.