The Cesar-Ranchería Basin is located at the northern edge of the South American Plate, close to the Caribbean Plate. During the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic eras, the basin was connected to the Magdalena River basins (Middle and Lower Magdalena Valleys) and the Sinú-Jacinto Basin in the west and the Maracaibo Basin, of which the Catatumbo Basin forms the Colombian part, in the east. Compressional tectonic movement commenced in the Late Paleogene, creating an intermontane foreland basin enclosed by the Serranía del Perijá and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The east-west oriented dextral strike-slip Oca Fault in the north is estimated to have been active since the Early Eocene with a total displacement of . The Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Fault was a Jurassic extensional rift fault, reactivated as oblique reverse fault in the Oligocene.