Tectonic Setting of the World’s Giant Oil and Gas Fields

In Halbouty (ed.), Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade 1990–1999, AAPG Memoir 78, pp. 15–105. The world's 877 giant fields cluster in 27 regions, about 30% of the land surface, and sort into six tectonic settings: continental passive margins fronting major ocean basins (304 giants), continental rifts and sag basins (271), terminal continental collisions (173), accretion-related collisions (71), strike-slip margins (50), and plain subduction margins (8). The mainstream tectonic account of the concentration Nehring mapped as the 'ring of oil'.