The South Oman Salt Basin is a sedimentary basin in
Oman
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...
, at the southeastern edge of the
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.
Geographically, the ...
.
It is one of the oldest commercial deposits in the world.
Its oil is associated with source rocks of the
Neoproterozoic
The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic geologic eon, eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era an ...
to
Cambrian
The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...
age
Huqf Supergroup.
In 1937, the first operating license in South Oman was awarded to Petroleum Development Oman and Dhofar.
In 1976, the discovery of moveable oil in Nasir-1 boosted the carbonate intrasalt stringer exploration.
As the difficulty in delivering expected reserves was greater than expected, operations went dormant in 1986.
References
Geology of Oman
{{Oman-geo-stub