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Depositional and structural evolution of the middle Miocene depositional episode, east-central Gulf of Mexico

¹ ChevronTexaco, 4800 Fournace Pl, Bellaire, Texas 77401; present address: Chevron, 1500 Louisiana, Houston, Texas 77002; comber{at}chevron.com
² Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, 4412 Spicewood Springs Road, Building 600, Austin, Texas 78759-8500

Ricardo Combellas-Bigott holds a B.S. degree from Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela, and a Ph.D. in geological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently working as a geoscientist in petroleum reservoir characterization and modeling in a variety of projects, including west African and South American basins with Chevron. His present interests include stratigraphy and sedimentology, geological-guided reservoir modeling, integrated subsurface, and economic risk and uncertainty analysis.Bill Galloway is a research professor at the Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, and the Emeritus Morgan Davis Centennial Professor of Petroleum Geology in the Department of Geological Sciences. He obtained a B.S. degree from Texas A&M College and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He has published more than 100 articles and abstracts on subjects ranging from clastic sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, petroleum geology and resource evaluation, hydrogeology, and uranium geology. Through his 30-year career with Conoco, the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, and the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, he has worked on projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Permian basin, Gulf of Alaska, North Sea, and Northwest Shelf and Sydney basins, Australia. He is currently the principal investigator on the Gulf Basin Depositional Synthesis Industry Consortium, which is in its 10th year.

A regional stratigraphic and structural framework has been established for the middle Miocene sediment-depositional episode from the shelf through the slope to the basin floor for the east-central Gulf of Mexico. Two widespread, transgressive deposits associated with the faunal tops Amphistegina B (15.5 Ma) and Textularia W (12.1 Ma) define the middle Miocene depositional episode. The middle Miocene episode incorporates four genetic cycles (each 1–2 m.y.) bounded by regional maximum flooding surfaces and distal condensed sections.

Two long-lived extrabasinal fluvial-deltaic axes, the ancestral Mississippi and the eastern Tennessee systems, provided the bulk of sediments that infilled the middle Miocene depocenters. Salt-related structural provinces controlled the location and configuration of the depocenters. Linked structural systems, dominated by gravity spreading, and an eastern minibasin province, driven by differential subsidence, were established during this period. Two depositional systems tracts characterize the constructional shelf margin of the middle Miocene: (1) a volumetrically dominant mixed-load fluvial-dominated platform delta, shelf-margin delta, and delta-fed apron systems tract; and (2) a strand-plain, shelf, and muddy slope systems tract. However, the offlapping shelf-margin systems were punctuated by a large-scale slope failure, the Harang collapse system, associated with massive salt withdrawal and retreat of delta systems.

A large volume of sediment, funneled by the Harang collapse system, bypassed the slope, initiating a long-lived submarine-fan system. The fan formed in a minibasin corridor and unconfined abyssal plain, approximately 240 mi (384 km) from the active shelf margins. The fan system evolved from a structurally controlled, elongate, sand-rich to mixed sand and mud fan to a large, radial, mixed sand and mud fan.

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