Oil production off the coasts of Brazil and West Africa is a relatively recent endeavor. Initial exploration wells were drilled less than thirty years ago based on offshore geological models inferred from the interpretation of incipient seismic reflection data.

Brazil and Africa were once part of the same continent their rifting apart began during the Early Cretaceous time about 140 million years ago. The respective coastlines still closely match each other upon geodetic reconstruction. Post-rift events that have affected the architecture of their present continental margins are also strikingly similar, as is the petroleum geology and the hydrocarbon plays of their corresponding offshore salt basins.

Modern seismic reflection surveys on both margins and a wealth of well data have continually reaffirmed a mirror image analogy for hydrocarbon plays occurring on both sides of the South Atlantic Ocean salt basins. This paper examines the architecture, petroleum geology and seismic response of deep-water reservoirs along the salt basins offshore Brazil and West Africa. The study is based on massive, modern, non-exclusive, seismic data sets recently acquired along the continental shelf, slope and rise in both sides of the South Atlantic Ocean, mainly in the Espirito Santo, Campos and Santos Basin in the Brazilian side and in the Angola, Congo and Gabon basins offshore West Africa.