2003 23rd Annual GCSSEPM Foundation Bob F. Perkins Research Conference
"Shelf Margin Deltas and Linked Downslope
Petroleum Systems: Global
Significance and
Future Exploration Potential"
December 7-10, 2003, Houston, Texas
Throughout the exploration and production history of many of the world's mature petroleum provinces, shelf margin delta deposystems have been excellent hydrocarbon reservoirs. In the Gulf of Mexico, major hydrocarbon producing trends have been identified as shelf margin delta reservoir systems connected updip to entrenched alluvial valleys and downdip to deep-water fans. These producing trends were originally delineated from 2-D seismic data, well logs, microfossil assemblages and conventional cores. More recently, widespread use of 3-D seismic, borehole imaging technologies, and sequence stratigraphic models, emphasizes the significance of shelf margin deltas as reservoirs and as sediment feeder systems for reservoir facies in deep water. In a new century that will require geoscientists to meet a steadily increasing energy demand, it is time to reevaluate the future exploration potential of shelf margin deltas and their links to productive reservoir systems in downdip deep-water settings.
The 2003 GCSSEPM Foundation Bob F. Perkins Research Conference will bring together specialists from industry and academic research institutions around the world to share information and insight into deposition, fault and salt-induced structuring, and importantly, hydrocarbon migration in the shelf-to-basin transition zone. As exploration challenges become greater, exciting new reservoir and hydrocarbon migration models are being developed from high-resolution stratigraphic and sedimentologic studies of Quaternary systems. Depositional responses to eustatic sea level and climate are being deciphered. Exciting new sequence stratigraphic models, seismic imaging and production technologies are being applied to shelf margin and slope reservoirs in a wide range of sedimentary basin types in diverse systems around the world.
Poster and oral presentations and accompanying papers will be presented in six topical areas related to exploration and production of shelf margin deltas and genetically related slope and basin deep-water systems: (1) Quaternary shelf-edge delta studies and models; (2) hydrocarbon exploration and development case histories of expanded shelf margin reservoir complexes; (3) studies of shelf-to-slope transition zones from the perspective of reservoirs and basin-to-shelf-margin hydrocarbon migration; (4) reservoir development in salt-deformed and growth-fault-expanded slope section; (5) petroleum systems that charge shelf margin and associated downdip reservoirs; (6) application of new tools and technologies to shelf-margin-to-basin systems; and (7) shelf margin tectonics and sediment-salt interaction at the rapidly accreting and expanding shelf edge. Presentations of examples from petroleum-producing basins outside of the Gulf of Mexico are especially solicited and will provide information on basin framework geology and tectonic setting to illuminate regional contrasts related to differences in climate, oceanography, and detrital provenance.