Structural Interpretation of Missa Kaswal Area

Abstract

Hydrocarbons are one of the most essential parts of economics of any country. Even on the smaller scale hydrocarbons play a wide role everyday life. Geophysicists are trying since a long time for the exploration of hydrocarbons in the Earth and are applying different methods in this regard. Seismic Methods are one of the most widely used methods in the exploration of hydrocarbons especially Reflection Seismology (used in the present work) has the great importance in this regard. Pakistan has high potential of hydrocarbons in its northern (like Potwar, Kohat) and southern (like Badin, Mari etc.) parts. The Indus basin, including the Kohat-Potwar (study area) depression, belongs to the category of extra-continental downward basins which account for 48% of the world's known petroleum resources (Riva, 1983). The Potwar sub basin is dominated by the structural traps and mostly seismic data is incorporated for the delineation of these structures. On the other hand, the incorporation of seismological data for interpreting the structures has not been done yet by previous workers for the area of Potwar. Although in other parts of the world, the integration of seismic with seismology has been carried out since ages. In the present work, an attempt has been made to correlate the results obtained by the seismic and seismological techniques for the first time, to obtain a structural model of the Northern Potwar Deformed Zone (NPDZ). Interpretation of the seismic lines as well as Focal Mechanism Solutions (FMS) of different earthquakes has been carried out in order to study the subsurface structure of the area.