Does the evolution of salt structures interconnect different fault families in the Espírito Santo Basin?

The Espírito Santo Basin is a rift basin developed in the Southeastern continental margin of Brazil during the Late Jurassic - Cretaceous. Halokinesis in this basin started in the Late Aptian - Early Albian and continued through the Cenozoic. Salt structures developed in this basin include vertical salt diapirs, salt rafts and salt walls along conjugate normal faults. The objective of this study is to investigate the character and the timing of formation of faults developed at the crest or adjacent to different salt structures that occur closely spaced. We interpreted ten horizons and 215 faults in a high-quality 3D volume and performed displacement analyses to 12 representative faults of five distinctive families based on their position around salt structures. A paleostress model for the faults in the study area was created, and the magnitudes and azimuths were used to model the slip tendency and leakage factor. We found that faults in the study area have a similar geometry resultant from segment dip-linkage. Faults from different families are geometrically interconnected along different fault structures. We also found that Diapir 3 was the most active salt structure during the Cenozoic, influencing the fluid-flow and the geometry of the distinct fault families.