Print this pageAbstract: Geology of Bering Shelf
Sankey L. Blanton, Jr.
The present Bering Shelf is the largest untested, contiguous marine area in the free world that is drillable with today's technology. The present Bering Tertiary basins have an optimum potential for sizable accumulations of hydrocarbons.
The present shelf edge approximates the position of the Cretaceous shelf edge. The tectonic evolution of the shelf has made correlation of the geologic history of the Mesozoic onshore with the offshore impossible. The formation of large shelf-edge tensional basins (Navarin and St. George), immediately after plate naturalization, suggests that common solutions of pull-aparts and/or arc-related basins are inadequate to explain the geologic setting. Apparently, the Kula plate interface vacillated between subduction and transform phenomena during the Mesozoic. Neutralization occurred in early Tertiary time when the Aleutian arc was interposed between the tip of the Kula plate and its spreading center (bulk of the plate).
The best geologic analogs to the Navarin and St. George basins are the Gulf Coast interior salt basins.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90973©1976-1977 AAPG Distinguished Lectures