Extensive 3D seismic exploration has revealed in much of the West Siberian petroliferous basin area a special type of faults and deformations within the sedimentary cover, caused by low-separation basement strike-slip faults. A geologic phenomenon associated with strike-slip fault structures is something new to the understanding of the subsurface structure of West Siberia. Complex morphology, intense disjunctive faulting, block arrangement and enormously wide stratigraphic range of oil and gas presence are characteristic of numerous hydrocarbon fields within the zones of strike-slip fault structures. It would certainly be a risky endeavor to design field development-andproduction projects, drill production wells and conduct geotechnical surveys without confident geomechanical and kinematic models for structure-forming, fluid-conductive and sealing dislocations caused by strike-slip faults in the basement.
IntroductionThe West Siberian sedimentary basin is one of the world's largest oil and gasbearing basins with hydrocarbon fields unique in size and volume. Recent decades have seen hundreds of thousands of seismic line-kilometers shot, about 200,000 wells drilled, hundreds of oil and gas fields discovered, and several billion tons of oil and several trillion cubic meters of gas produced. The principal producing zone, the 2,000 to 4,000 m-thick Jurassic and Cretaceous clastic sequence overlain by the Tertiary and Quaternary overburden, is already well studied. However, 3D seismic surveys, subsequent quality processing and detailed interpretation of the acquired data have allowed discovery of essentially Addresses: G. N. Gogonenkov, A. I. Timurziev: 38/3 Narodnogo