Genetic aspects of the petroleum resource potential of marine sedimentary basins

The historical-genetic method developed at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the assessment of the petroleum resource potential is discussed with consideration of its main tasks and the successive procedures in its application. Such studies are crowned by a compilation of separate maps demonstrating scales of oil and gas generation and maps of hydrocarbon genesis zoning of basins with outlining centers of oil and gas generation and defining different-phase hydrocarbon-generation zones. The method was tested in over twenty continental-marginal and intracontinental basins studied to a different extent. The sedimentary basins of the Atlantic continental margin off Africa and the Caspian and Black seas were used as objects for applying the historical-genetic method for assessing their petroleum resource potential.