Interplay Between Salt Tectonics and a Large Igneous Province in the Espírito Santo Basin (Brazil)

Abstract Salt tectonics provinces host numerous resources and are now targeted as potential areas of development for energy storage capacities such as underground storage in salt caverns. Sedimentary basins containing salt structures are common at passive margins where volcanic rocks, emplaced either during the lithospheric breakup or the post‐rift subsidence, are also widespread. The interplay between volcanics and salt structures has been observed at various scales but never at the crustal scale along an entire passive margin. We have used subsurface data (seismic reflection and well data) to investigate how the formation of a Large Igneous Province (LIP) influenced the development of a gravity‐driven salt system in the Espírito Santo basin (offshore Brazil). The data show that where the LIP is absent, a classical gravity‐driven salt system emplaced with updip extension, translation and downdip contraction. When approaching the LIP, the emplacement of the volcanics caused salt expulsion under the load of the volcanic complex resulting in contractional features with a continent‐ward vergence. It completely overprinted the former translational domain and further south from the LIP, salt expulsion under the load of the volcanic complex, allowed for the development of a regional salt canopy. Our results highlight that salt‐related features such as halokinetic sequences, salt wings, allochthonous salt sheets and flats and ramps at the base of salt sheets, also occur when salt meets lava and volcaniclastics.