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1 Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, 313 Deike Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802; dsawyer{at}geosc.psu.edu
2 Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, 307 Deike Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802; flemings{at}geosc.psu.edu
3 Shell International Exploration and Production, Bellaire Technology Center, 3737 Bellaire Blvd., Houston, Texas 77025; craig.shipp{at}shell.com
4 Shell International Exploration and Production, Bellaire Technology Center, 3737 Bellaire Blvd., Houston, Texas 77025; charles.winker{at}shell.com
Derek E. Sawyer received his bachelor's degree in marine science at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2002. He received his M.S. degree in geosciences at Penn State University in 2006. He is now a doctoral student in the Basin Research Group in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State University. His research focuses on geotechnical properties of submarine mass-transport deposits.
Peter B. Flemings is a professor with the Penn State University Department of Geosciences. He received his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College and an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. in geology from Cornell University. He was an associate research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Crosby Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the study of fluid flow in sedimentary basins.
R. Craig Shipp has been the leader of the Geohazards Assessment Team at Shell International E&P Inc. for the past seven years. His academic training includes a B.S. degree from Dickinson College, an M.S. degree from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in geological oceanography from the University of Maine. He is presently a Distinguished Lecturer for the AAPG in the Asia-Pacific Region. His professional interests focus on marine mass-transport processes and the effect of mass-wasted features and marine gas hydrates on deep-water drilling and development operations.
Charles D. Winker joined Shell in 1987 after receiving degrees in geology from the University of Georgia (B.S.), University of Texas at Austin (M.A.) and University of Arizona (Ph.D.), and employment at the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology and Institute for Geophysics. He has since been employed as a research geologist at Shell's Bellaire Technology Center, where he has consulted in sedimentology, stratigraphy, and geohazards for both exploration and production departments, with a focus on the Gulf of Mexico. For several years, he was the geologist on the Shallow Water Flow Research Team, which helped to overcome this serious obstacle to the Ursa field development.
The interplay between sedimentation and erosion during the late Pleistocene in the Mars-Ursa region, northern Gulf of Mexico, resulted in a complex compartmentalized reservoir. Rapid deposition, directly downdip of the Mississippi River beginning about 70 k.y., quickly filled antecedent topography in the Mars-Ursa region with a thick accumulation of sand and mud called the "blue unit." This permeable reservoir was rapidly and asymmetrically buried by thick, mud-rich levees of two channel-levee systems. Both systems plunged from north to south with a steeper gradient than the underlying blue unit. Rotated channel-margin slides present in both channel-levee systems rotated low-permeability, mud-rich levee deposits beneath the sand-rich channel fill. As a result of the channel-levee systems, the east-west hydraulic connectivity of the blue unit decreases progressively from north to south until its eastern and western halves become completely separated.
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  M. R. Hudec, M. P.A. Jackson, and D. D. Schultz-Ela The paradox of minibasin subsidence into salt: Clues to the evolution of crustal basins Geological Society of America Bulletin, January 1, 2009; 121(1-2): 201 - 221. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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