UTIG RESEARCH PROJECTS ARCHIVE

A joint industry-consortium project of the
Bureau of Economic Geology and Institute for Geophysics

Field trip to Trinidad & Barbados, 1-4 March 2005!

Project Summary (cf. Project Proposal (PDF) for details):
Trinidad and Tobago and its offshore margins is one of the leading sources of oil and natural gas to the US market and will continue to be so for the early part of the 21st century. We have established an industry-funded consortium study that will integrate existing industry 3D seismic data covering much of the shelf, slope and deep basin of the eastern offshore region of Trinidad (cf. map). Current sponsors for Year One of the study include: Shell, Conoco, Norsk-Hydro, BHP-Billiton, Talisman, and TotalFinaElf. The Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Energy has also agreed to provide data for the study. Additional information is available at http://www.beg.utexas.edu/indassoc/dm2/.

Our emphasis will be on analyzing the upper 1000 milliseconds of 3D seismic data made available to this study (cf. map at right for areas of major 3D surveys acquired by Shell, Exxon, Conoco, and British Petroleum). In addition, several large 3D surveys have been acquired by companies attempting to extend existing production (i.e., Samaan Field by British Petroleum and Ibis field by EOG Resources). A recent publication by the Exxon group on 3D data from the Columbus basin reveals that the 3D data sets provide remarkably detailed images of shale diapir geometry, surface lapout and seismic facies.

These data will be processed, mosaiced, and interpreted by us and support staff over an initial three year period at the University of Texas at Austin and summarized in the form of three annual reports to the sponsors of the study. The advantage to individual companies sponsoring the study will be the regional and synoptic structural and sedimentological interpretations of marine data that extends well beyond their individual exploration block or blocks. These data are sufficiently shallow as to not compromise any of the active exploration or drilling in these respective blocks. Products distributed to sponsors will include complete digital mosaics of seafloor bathymetry, amplitude, and maps of key horizons. These products will all be placed in ArcInfo format to insure that the information can be fully exploited by the sponsors.

Timing and Products: This project is now in its fourth and final year and will terminate on December 31, 2005. The final year-end meeting for sponsors will be Friday, November 18, 2005, at the University of Texas at Austin. At this meeting we will present a series of talks and the final results of the study.

Future Work: A regional structural-stratigraphic-tectonic study will continue in the form of a UTIG-based consortium called "Caribbean Basins, Tectonics, and Hydrocarbons", or CBTH (http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/). The PI of this study will be Paul Mann at UTIG. Phase I of this project that focuses on the southern Caribbean was begun on September 1, 2005 and will last for three years.

A followup study led by Lesli Wood at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology is called "Quantitative Clastics Laboratory" or "QCL" (http://www.beg.utexas.edu/indassoc/dm2/index.htm) and will begin in 2006. This project will apply seismic geomorphology to reservoir characterizations and will examine data from Trinidad along with other passive and active margins around the world.

Publications related to this study:
Babb, S., and Mann, P., 1999, Structural and sedimentary development of a Neogene transpressional boundary between the Caribbean and South America plates in Trinidad and the Gulf of Paria, Caribbean Sedimentary Basins, Elsevier Sedimentary Basins of the World Series, Series Editor, K. Hsu, p. 495-557.

Wood, L. J., 2000, Chronostratigraphy and tectonostratigraphy of the Columbus Basin, eastern offshore Trinidad: AAPG Bulletin, v. 84, p. 1905-1928.

Mann, P., Weber, J., and Wood, L., 2001, Tectonic framework for Trinidad and its eastern offshore area, AAPG Annual meeting, June 3-6, Denver, Colorado.

Mann, P., and Wood, L., 2003, Late Quaternary transpressional deformation along the submarine extension of the Warm Springs-Central Range fault zone, eastern offshore Trinidad, AAPG annual meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 11-14, 2003.

Wood, L., and Mann, P., 2003, Shale diapirs, mud volcanos, and fluid systems in offshore Trinidad and eastern Venezuela, AAPG International meeting, Barcelona, Spain, September, 2003.

Moscardelli, L., L. Wood, and P. Mann, 2004, Debris Flow Distribution and Controls on Slope to Basin Deposition, Offshore Trinidad (abs.): AAPG Annual Meeting, Abstract with Program.

Mann, P., Wood, L., Bingham, L., Escalona, A., Gahagan, L., Garciacaro, E., Moscardelli, L., Soto, D., Sullivan, S., 2005, Dep-Marine Depositional Margins (DM2) Atlas of Eastern Offshore Trinidad, unpublished atlas (please direct all inquiries about this atlas to Paul Mann at UTIG).

Moscardelli, L., L. Wood, and J. Andrews, 2005, Visualization Technology and Quantitative Morphometrics of Mass Transport Complexes along the Continental Margin of Trinidad, West Indies (abs.): Seismic Geomorphology SEPM Research Conference, Houston, Texas.

Moscardelli, L., L. Wood, and P. Mann, 2005, Debris Architecture and Processes in Offshore Trinidad: Implications for Basin Fill in Tectonically Active Margins (poster): AGU Fall Meeting 2005, San Francisco, California

Sullivan, S., Wood, L., and Mann, P., 2005, Distribution, nature, and origin of mobile mud features offshore Trinidad, Gulf Coast Societies-SEPM 24th Bob F.Perkins Research Conference, p. 840-867.

Moscardelli, L., L. Wood, and P. Mann, in press, Mass Transport Complexes in Offshore Trinidad and Venezuela, AAPG Bulletin.

Moscardelli, L., and L. Wood, 2006, Seismic Geomorphology of Mass Transport Deposits and Controls on Formation and Character, Eastern Offshore Trinidad and Venezuela (abs.): AAPG Annual Meeting, Abstract with program.

Moscardelli, L., and L. Wood, 2006, Morphometry of Mass Transport Complexes in Offshore Trinidad (abs.): External Controls on Deep Water Depositional Systems; Climate, Sea-level and Sediment Flux, London, UK.

Theses and dissertations related to this study:
Mize, Kristine, Controls on the morphology and development of deep-marine channels, eastern offshore Trinidad and Venezuela, 2004, unpublished MS thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 119 p. (L. Wood, supervisor) (now with EnCana, Denver, Colorado).

Aitken, Trevor, 2005, Cenozoic stratigraphic and tectonic history of the Grenada and Tobago basins as determined from marine seismic data, wells, and onland geology, unpubl. MS thesis, Univ. of Texas at Austin, 89 p. (now at Devon Energy, Houston, Texas).

Garciacaro, Emilio, Tectonic controls on sedimentation in the Columbus basin, eastern offshore Trinidad (expected date of graduation, spring, 2006).

Soto, David, Interpretation of 3D seismic data across the major fault of the Caribbean-South America plate boundary in Trinidad, MS candidate (expected date of graduation, spring, 2006).

Moscardelli, Lorena, Tertiary evolution of the northeastern South American margin, PhD candidate (L. Wood, supervisor, expected completion date, fall 2007).

Student presentations at UTIG related to this study:

Author(s)	Title	Place presented	Date presented
Samarjit Chakraborty	Shallow Structural Interpretation of Four 3-D Seismic Volumes, Eastern Offshore Area of Trinidad	UTIG	May 2003
Sean Sullivan	Stratigraphy, Structure and Depositional Processes of Offshore Eastern Trinidad and Venezuela	UTIG	May 2003
Samarjit Chakraborty	Sedimentologic and tectonic interpretation of merged bathymetric data derived from 3D seismic volumes, eastern offshore Trinidad	UTIG	Nov. 2002
Sean Sullivan	Catalogue of bottom sediment types of eastern offshore Trinidad: Relations to submarine canyons, surficial mud diapirs and faults, hydrocarbon seeps and productive	UTIG	Nov. 2002