Origin of sulfate in barite and calcite cements in the Jebel Madar salt dome (Oman)

Jebel Madar is a 500-m high mountain rising in the desert at the Oman Foothills. The Jebel consists of Triassic to Cretaceous carbonate host rocks forming the carapace of a salt dome. Halokinesis caused major fracturing and faulting at Jebel Madar, and the resulting structures acted as the main pathways for fluids that generated diagenetic cements composed of both barite and calcite. The spatial distribution of calcite and barite occurrences shows that calcite is formed in large abundance along the three main faults, whereas barite is more concentrated along faults further away from the three main ones. The stable carbon and oxygen isotope composition of calcite and fluid inclusion data from both calcite and barite show a distinct evolution of the fluid with a highly saline component towards more mixing with meteoric water. This is in agreement with clumped isotopes data on calcite cements indicating an evolution towards lower temperatures, consistent with doming of the Jebel and greater input of lower-temperature descending meteoric fluids. Here, we present sulphur and oxygen isotopic data on barite that suggest a link between the barite formation and the Precambrian salt underlying Jebel Madar. The average δ34S measured in barite is 33‰ CDT (1σ = 5‰; n = 33), which falls at the lower end of the δ34S range reported for the Ara Group anhydrite. The average δ18O in the same barite samples is 23‰ VSMOW (1σ = 2‰; n = 33). Data from the barite will be compared with sulphur isotopes from the carbonate-associate sulfate in the calcite cements. The overall goal of our research is to gain a better insight in the formation process of barite and calcite in Jebel Madar and its link with salt tectonics. We would like to acknowledge the financial support of QCCSRC (funded jointly by Qatar Petroleum, Shell and the Qatar Science & Technology Park) and the GSA Laubach fund for this study.