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Geologic and shallow salt tectonic setting of the Mad Dog and Atlantis fields

Relationship between salt, faults, and seafloor geomorphology

AOA Geophysics, Moss Landing, California, U.S.

Michael M. Angell

William Lettis & Associates, San Rafael, California, U.S.

John. R. Brand

Geoscience Earth & Marine Services, Houston, Texas, U.S.

Jim Thomson, Tim Buddin, Mark Williams and William Hart

BP America, Houston, Texas, U.S.

William J. Berger, III

Geoscience Earth & Marine Services, Houston, Texas, U.S.

Corresponding author: Dan_Orange@AOAGeophysics.com

Editor's note: The material in this paper was prepared and presented (OTC Paper 15157) at the 2003 Offshore Technology Conference, 5–8 May in Houston, Texas, U.S., and is published with permission. Acknowledgment is gratefully made to the OTC for granting permission for publication of this work.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Many of today's active hydrocarbon provinces are in areas with mobile substrate (either salt or mud). Interpreting the style and activity of the substrate, and its impact on the seafloor and near-surface environment, is central to understanding the geohazards of such field areas.

Both the Mad Dog and Atlantis prospects are located where the base of the northern Gulf of Mexico continental slope meets the continental rise at the Sigsbee Escarpment (Figure 1). In this area, the Lower Continental Slope at the top of the Escarpment has an average water depth of 4500 ft, and the Upper Continental Rise at the base of the escarpment has an average water depth of 6800 ft (for a thorough and more detailed discussion of salt tectonics, including numerous papers on the Gulf of Mexico and Sigsbee Escarpment, see AAPG Memoir 65). Mad Dog and Atlantis are in the ‘Tabular Salt and Minibasin Province’ of the Gulf of Mexico, characterized by salt sheets and/or tabular salt with more or less flat tops and bottoms. The salt is allochthonous (meaning out of place, as opposed to autochthonous = in place), and the Sigsbee Escarpment represents the seafloor expression of the downslope limit of the allochthonous shallow salt.

View larger version (73K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Regional seafloor rendering of the northern Gulf of Mexico, showing the location of the Mad Dog and Atlantis prospects (southeastern Green Canyon OCS).