New tools to understand, date and explore for sedimentary-hosted ore deposits. These novel data can be linked to process-oriented ore formation models and provide powerful Understanding of trace element signatures of hydrocarbons associated with ore forming systems. We therefore see an opportunity to use experimental partitioning data to improve our The partitioning behavior of metals is dependent on water to oil ratios, oil and water chemistry. Relative stability of aqueous metal species competing against stable organo-metallic compounds. That the fractionation of metals across the water-oil interface is common and founded in the Showing larger enrichment factors compared to Ag and Cu. Observed preferential partitioning of ore forming metals into the hydrocarbons with Pb and Zn Using LA-ICPMS on single brine and composite brine-hydrocarbon fluid inclusions. In natural systems, the element partitioning between brine and hydrocarbons was investigated Simulations, laboratory water-oil partitioning experiments and a trace metal compilation of Observations from the Pillara Pb-Zn Mississippi-Valley type (MVT) deposit with numerical Oils plays an important role for element enrichment in hydrocarbons. Here we test the hypothesis that the interaction of aqueous solutions and crude We are interested in better understanding the underlying controls on metal enrichment in In substantial amounts and thus liquid hydrocarbons might act in some instances as ore-formingįluids. Įxperimental investigations have further shown that metals can be dissolved in crude oils Including sedimentary-hosted Pb-Zn, Au and platinum group elements (PGE) deposits. The occurrence of hydrocarbons has been documented for a variety of ore-forming systems The exhalative deposits are interpreted to have formed over seepages of cool fluids having salinities close to that of seawater, whereas the epigenetic deposits formed from much hotter fluids, probably brines, expelled during subsequent shale compaction. Both exhalative and epigenetic phases of mineralization are thought to have been sourced through the compaction-driven dewatering of shales.

Economic epigenetic Zn-Pb deposits that have been mined elsewhere in the same general area of the Canning basin were formed during the early Carboniferous or latest Devonian, many millions of years after the exhalative deposits. They probably nourished chemosynthetic bacteria that mediated the deposition of stromatolites, barite, and iron sulfides, resulting in growth of the stromatolite-barite-sulfide buildups.There is no known economic mineralization in the exhalative buildups, but some drill holes encountered minor uneconomic veins of epigenetic Zn-Pb mineralization, filling narrow fissures that postdate the exhalative deposits.

The expelled fluids carried dissolved carbonate, barium, iron, and reduced sulfur. This resulted in the expulsion of large volumes of fluids along permeable interbeds, shale-limestone contacts, and synsedimentary faults, reaching, the sea floor as cool-fluid seepages. The stromatolite-barite-sulfide deposits also occur as allochthonous clasts in penecontemporaneous debris-flow deposits.Postdepositional compaction of basinal shales in the Gogo Formation commonly, amounted to about 7 5 percent. They fill fissures that probably formed as a result of contemporary seismic activity, and the early compaction of underlying and adjoining shales. The iron sulfides (marcasite and pyrite) are weathered to gossans at the surface. The mounds are limestone buildups, composed of stromatolites intergrown with barite and cut by iron sulfide veins. These, mounds, hundreds of meters long and tens of meters thick, occur along contacts between basinal shales (Gogo Formation) and marginal-slope limestones (Sadler Limestone) and adjacent to synsedimentary faults cutting the Gogo Formation. Lenticular stromatolite-barite-sulfide mounds, interpreted as sedimentary exhalative deposits, are exposed at several localities in Devonian reef complexes of the Canning basin, Western Australia.

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