The uplift of the Sierra de Perija and Merida Andes and the marine connection with the Falcon Basin ultimately controlled the distribution of shallow-marine, coastal, and nonmarine sedimentary rocks in the Maracaibo Basin during the early and middle Miocene. These rocks contain the most important shale top seal in the basin and nearly three-quarters of the produced plus proven reserves of the supergiant Bolivar coastal fields. The Maracaibo Basin has been isolated from extrabasinal drainage systems since the late Oligocene, and sediments derived from the surrounding highlands were either deposited in the basin or delivered into the neighboring Falcon Basin through a narrow marine passage (the westward extension of the Falcon Channel). Four unconformity-bounded sequences mapped in the northeastern sector of the Maracaibo Basin help recreate its regional paleogeography as it was flooded from the northeast through this passage. In the early Miocene, part of the basin became a semi-enclosed shallow-marine gulf, and wave- and tide-modified deltas prograded across the temporarily inactive Lama-Icotea fault system. As sea the shoreline advanced eastward of the Falcon Channel, and valleys were incised and subsequently filled by transgressive estuarine sediments. In the next sea level highstand, tidal-bar complexes of a tide-dominated delta system prograded and filled all available accommodation space. In the middle Miocene, relative sea level dropped into the Falcon Basin, and the Maracaibo area became a mixed-load fluvial drainage basin. By late middle Miocene, the two basins were separated, and the Maracaibo Basin became an intermontane fluvial-lacustrine depression.