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Paleocene to Eocene deep-water slope canyons, western Gulf of Mexico: Further insights for the provenance of deep-water offshore Wilcox Group plays

¹ Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78713-8924; angela.mcdonnell{at}beg.utexas.edu
² Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78713-8924
³ Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78713-8924

Angela McDonnell received her Ph.D. and M.S. degree from University College Dublin and her B.S. degree from University College Cork, Ireland. She was a consultant geophysicist for Robertson Research International prior to joining the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, as a research associate. Her present research focuses on the structure and stratigraphy of the Gulf of Mexico, particularly the western Gulf.

Robert G. Loucks is a senior research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology. He received his B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1967 and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976. His general research interests include carbonate and siliciclastic sequence stratigraphy, depositional systems, diagenesis, and reservoir characterization. His present research includes deep-buried reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico.

William E. 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 his B.S. degree from Texas A&M College and his 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. He is currently the principal investigator on the Gulf Basin depositional synthesis industry consortium, which is in its 13th year.

ABSTRACT

In the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), an extensive deep-water fan system of the lower Tertiary Wilcox Group forms a significant exploration target, yet connections to equivalent-aged onshore fluvial, deltaic, and shallow-marine reservoirs are poorly documented. Using a large, three-dimensional (3-D) seismic survey (3300 mi², 8500 km²), we examined the lower Tertiary structure and stratigraphy of the underexplored Texas coastal zone, approximately 60 mi (96 km) downdip of the paleoshelf edge and 200 mi (322 km) updip of the deep-water discoveries.

Canyons are identified throughout the inferred Paleocene to upper Eocene interval near Matagorda Bay, with this study focusing on the youngest. These are typically 2–2.5 mi (3–4 km) wide and 600–1600 ft (200–500 m) deep. Main incisional axes trend downslope, and some bifurcate. Early salt movement appears to have created an irregular paleoslope topography and an altered slope gradient, thereby influencing depositional flow pathways. In a paleogeographic context, this canyon complex is interpreted to lie in a middle- to lower-slope setting and sits directly downdip of the Wilcox Group shelf-margin canyon systems. Although not all of the canyons necessarily connect updip to the shelf-edge canyons, or downdip to fan systems, they represent part of a large-scale complex along this western GOM margin that acted as a conduit to the successfully drilled, deep-water, lower Tertiary Wilcox turbidite play. These results have importance not only for the prospectivity of the Texas shelf but also for the regional understanding of the Paleocene through lower Eocene paleogeography of the GOM.

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