ABSTRACT: High Resolution Seismic and Core Data from Northern Gulf of Mexico Shelf Used to Develop Self-Instructional Web Sites in Sequence Stratigraphy and Reservoir Analysis

ANDERSON, JOHN, LAURA BANFIELD, PHILIP BART, BRENDA ECKLES, MICHELLE FASSEL, ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ, JULIA SMITH, and JENNIFER SNOW

Over 20,000 kilometers of high resolution seismic data and several hundred oil company platform borings and cores from the northern Gulf of Mexico continental shelf and upper slope are used to examine the response of different depositional systems to rising and falling sea level during the last few glacial eustatic cycles. The study area extends from the west Florida shelf to the Rio Grande and includes a number of different fluvial valleys, deltas, paleoshoreline deposits, shelf sand bodies and other depositional systems with different fluvial input, shelf gradient, and climatic and oceanographic settings.

A series of paleogeographic maps, coinciding with prominent seismic stratigraphic surfaces, and represetative seismic sections and cores are used to illustrate how deposition varied from area to area during the last highstand, lowstand and transgression. Variations between deposits are profound. In some areas the stratigraphic section is dominated by highstand deposits while other areas are dominated by transgressive and/or lowstand deposits. Potential time equivalent reservoirs also vary along the shelf. Within a given area there is reasonable repetition of depositional patterns over several glacial eustatic cycles, so predictable trends in reservoir shape and stratigraphic position are observed. These results are being used to develop a series of self-instructional modules on sequence stratigraphy and reservoir analysis that will soon be available on the Rice University web site.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90941©1997 GCAGS 47th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana