To date, petroleum resources of Jordan have not been adequately tested. There are numerous oil and gas shows throughout Jordan, even in wells that are not located on valid structures, and there is an abundance of surface indications of hydrocarbons in the form of seeps , asphalt impregnation's, and near surface deposits of rich oil shales.
Oil was discovered in, and was produced from, Cretaceous reservoirs In the Hamzeh oil field and the Azraq basin. Currently, in 2008, it is yielding up to 25 barrels per day. Gas also was discovered in and is produced from Ordovician sandstone reservoirs in the Risha area, with a cumulative production of 168.8 bcf by the end of the year 2008 .
Jordan is favorably situated between the Precambrian outcrop belt and the rich oil-producing areas of the Gulf Coast Geosyncline, making it a prime prospective frontier area. More than 34000 line kilometer were recorded by the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) and international oil companies. This work, coupled with the results from a 3-D survey conducted over the Lisan Peninsula of the Dead Sea, and geological information and with reports pertaining to 121 exploratory and development, provide a good data base from which to conduct exploration in basins with proven oil potential.
Although a total of 121 wells have been drilled in Jordan, 59 were clustered around discoveries and/or were for development purposes; only five wells penetrated the whole sedimentary sequence. Further hydrocarbon potential remains to be evaluated.
New insights into the subsurface geology of Jordan, gained by recent seismic work and reprocessing of old seismic data, reveal the existence of deep basins with attractive structural styles which are essentially untested.
Located in the northwestern part of the Arabian peninsula, about 95 percent of Jordan's territory is underlain by sedimentary rocks, which attain a thickness of more than 12 km in the Jordan Rift Graben. Further to the east, in the Azraq and Risha areas, sedimentary rocks are approximately seven kilometers thick. Most of the country is thought to be covered by four to five kilometers of sediments. The section overlying its crystalline basement consists of units ranging in the age from late Proterozoic to Holocene.
In its simplest form , the geology of Jordan consists of a sequence of mainly marine sediments, which surround a small area of Precanmbrian crystalline outcrop in the southwestern part of the country and thicken toward the north and east. In outcrop, close to the Precambrian core, the units are thin and separated by many inconformities. Proceeding in the basin-ward direction, the inconformities diminish as more and more of the units missing in the outcrop are encountered.
Structurally, Jordan can be divided into a series of broad, plateau- lime arches and gentle desert covered basins. The basics tectonic features, which developed at different and rates, are intersected by long, essentially linear graben and half graben, along which significant strike slip movement has occurred. The most fundamental of these linear fault zones strike northwest, parallel to the Red Sea trend. They are cut off obliquely by the Red Sea Rift Trend. They are cut off obliquely by the Dead Sea Rift trend striking north and northeast. The Dead Sea rift, for example, is a tertiary feature with left lateral displacement of over 100 km. It is technically linked to the Red Sea spread Centre and the Gulf of Suez Graben system, with its oil-productive horst feature. The Dead Sea Rift forms the western boundary of the Arabian Plate and transforms spreading in the Red Sea to compression in the TaurusZagros compressional margin. In Jordan, the Dead Sea Rift has a significant extensional component , giving rise to both the subsea depressions in Jordan Valley and the thick late tertiary sediments that underlie the valley. Several sub-basins occur along the rift and probably contain up to 12000 m in of section.
Tectonic trends within the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic basins were largely controlled by transgressive regressive movements within the Tethys seaways entering from the north.
The basalt plateau is covered by 11415 sq. km. of thin basalt over a basin which known from regional considerations to contain a thick Mesozoic section, as well as known Paleozoic elements beneath it. Direct natural evidence for the existence of oil in Jordan is provided by surface occurrence of oil and gas seepage's, bituminous calcareous sediments, asphalt and tar sand. Some of these features have been famous since the beginning of recorded history.
