The Permian Basin is a large sedimentary basin in the southwestern part of the United States. It is the highest producing oil field in the United States, producing an average of 4.2 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2019. This sedimentary basin is located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. It reaches from just south of Lubbock, past Midland and Odessa, south nearly to the Rio Grande River in southern West Central Texas, and extending westward into the southeastern part of New Mexico. It is so named because it has one of the world's thickest deposits of rocks from the Permian geologic period. The greater Permian Basin comprises several component basins; of these, the Midland Basin is the largest, Delaware Basin is the second largest, and Marfa Basin is the smallest. The Permian Basin covers more than 86,000 square miles (220,000 km2), and extends across an area approximately 250 miles (400 km) wide and 300 miles (480 km) long.
A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when salt intrudes into overlying rocks in a process known as diapirism. Salt domes can have unique surface and subsurface structures, and they can be discovered using techniques such as seismic reflection. They are important in petroleum geology as they can function as petroleum traps.
The Maracaibo Basin, also known as Lake Maracaibo natural region, Lake Maracaibo depression or Lake Maracaibo Lowlands, is a foreland basin and one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela, found in the northwestern corner of Venezuela in South America. Covering over 36,657 square km, it is a hydrocarbon-rich region that has produced over 30 billion bbl of oil with an estimated 44 billion bbl yet to be recovered. The basin is characterized by a large shallow tidal estuary, Lake Maracaibo, located near its center. The Maracaibo basin has a complex tectonic history that dates back to the Jurassic period with multiple evolution stages. Despite its complexity, these major tectonic stages are well preserved within its stratigraphy. This makes The Maracaibo basin one of the most valuable basins for reconstructing South America's early tectonic history.
In the geologic timescale, the Callovian is an age and stage in the Middle Jurassic, lasting between 165.3 ± 1.1 Ma and 161.5 ± 1.0 Ma. It is the last stage of the Middle Jurassic, following the Bathonian and preceding the Oxfordian.
The Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex sits above Cretaceous-age strata ranging from ≈145-66 Ma. These Cretaceous-aged sediments lie above the eroded Ouachita Mountains and the Fort Worth Basin, which was formed by the Ouachita Orogeny. Going from west to east in the DFW Metroplex and down towards the Gulf of Mexico, the strata get progressively younger. The Cretaceous sediments dip very gently to the east.
Texas contains a wide variety of geologic settings. The state's stratigraphy has been largely influenced by marine transgressive-regressive cycles during the Phanerozoic, with a lesser but still significant contribution from late Cenozoic tectonic activity, as well as the remnants of a Paleozoic mountain range.
The Michigan Basin is a geologic basin centered on the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The feature is represented by a nearly circular pattern of geologic sedimentary strata in the area with a nearly uniform structural dip toward the center of the peninsula.
The Sirte Basin is a late Mesozoic and Cenozoic triple junction continental rift along northern Africa that was initiated during the late Jurassic Period. It borders a relatively stable Paleozoic craton and cratonic sag basins along its southern margins. The province extends offshore into the Mediterranean Sea, with the northern boundary drawn at the 2,000 meter (m) bathymetric contour. It borders in the north on the Gulf of Sidra and extends south into northern Chad.
The Orca Basin is a mid-slope, silled, mini-basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico some 300 km southwest of the Mississippi River mouth on the Louisiana continental slope. It is unique amongst the mini-basins in this area, in containing a large brine pool of anoxic salt brine. The pool is approximately 123 km2 (47 sq mi) in area and up to 220 m (720 ft) deep under 2,400 m (7,900 ft) depth of Gulf water and is derived from dissolution of underlying Jurassic age Louann Salt. With a volume of 13.3 km3 (3.2 cu mi) the pool results from the dissolution of about 3.62 billion tonnes of the Louann Salt bed into seawater. The basin owes its shape to ongoing salt tectonics and is surrounded by salt diapirs.
The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The Southern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, which border the gulf on the north, are often referred to as the "Third Coast" of the United States.
The Guaymas Fault, named for the city of Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, is a major right lateral-moving transform fault which runs along the seabed of the Gulf of California. It is an integral part of the Gulf of California Rift Zone, the northern extremity of the East Pacific Rise. The Guaymas Fault runs from the San Pedro Martir Basin located at the southern end of the San Lorenzo Fault, and extends southward to the Guaymas Basin, a heavily sedimented rift which includes both continental and oceanic crust and contains numerous hydrothermal vents.
The geology of North America is a subject of regional geology and covers the North American continent, the third-largest in the world. Geologic units and processes are investigated on a large scale to reach a synthesized picture of the geological development of the continent.
The salt tectonics off the Louisiana gulf coast can be explained through two possible methods. The first method attributes spreading of the salt because of sedimentary loading while the second method points to slope instability as the primary cause of gliding of the salt. The first method results in the formation of growth faults in the overlying sediment. Growth faults are normal faults that occur simultaneously with sedimentation, causing them to have thicker sediment layers on the downthrown sides of the faults. In the second method both the salt and the sediment are moving, making it more likely to migrate.
The Sigsbee Escarpment is a major bathymetric feature of the Gulf of Mexico, extending for about 560 kilometres. It separates the lower continental slope of the northern gulf from the abyssal plain of the Sigsbee Deep and has up to 900 m (3,000 ft) of relief across it. It has formed as a result of salt tectonics, due to the effects of loading of a thick layer of Jurassic halite by Upper Jurassic to Cenozoic sedimentary rocks.
The Campeche Knolls are diapirs rising from a salt deposit in the southern Gulf of Mexico, separated from the Mississippi-Texas-Louisiana salt province by the Sigsbee Abyssal Plain. Located southeast of the Sigsbee Knolls, the Campeche Knolls are bounded by Campeche Bank to the East, the Bay of Campeche to the South, and the salt-free abyssal plain called the Veracruz Tongue to the West. Salt deposition is inferred to have occurred in the Late Jurassic, during the rifting stage of the gulf, equivalent to the Louann Salt of the Texas-Louisiana slope. Multibeam echosounder images collected during R/V Sonne cruise SO174 show the northern Campeche Knolls as distinct, elongated hills that average 3 by 6 mi in size, with reliefs of 1,475 to 2,625 ft and slopes of 10 to 20 percent.
Paleontology in Louisiana refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Louisiana. Outcrops of fossil-bearing sediments and sedimentary rocks within Louisiana are quite rare. In part, this is because Louisiana’s semi-humid climate results in the rapid weathering and erosion of any exposures and the growth of thick vegetation that conceal any fossil-bearing strata. In addition, Holocene alluvial sediments left behind by rivers like the Mississippi, Red, and Ouachita, as well as marsh deposits, cover about 55% of Louisiana and deeply bury local fossiliferous strata.
The formation of the Gulf of Mexico, an oceanic rift basin located between North America and the Yucatan Block, was preceded by the breakup of the Supercontinent Pangaea in the Late-Triassic, weakening the lithosphere. Rifting between the North and South American plates continued in the Early-Jurassic, approximately 160 million years ago, and formation of the Gulf of Mexico, including subsidence due to crustal thinning, was complete by 140 Ma. Stratigraphy of the basin, which can be split into several regions, includes sediments deposited from the Jurassic through the Holocene, currently totaling a thickness between 15 and 20 kilometers.
The West and Central African Rift System (WCARS) is a rift system composed of two coeval Cretaceous rift sub-systems, the West African Rift sub-system (WAS) and the Central African Rift sub-system (CAS). These are genetically related, but are physically separated and show structural differences. The Logone Birni Basin constitutes a transitional area between the two sub-systems.
The Lusitanian Basin is a rift basin located on both the mainland and continental shelf off the west-central coast of Portugal. It covers an area measuring 20,000 square kilometres (7,700 sq mi) and extends north-south from Porto to Lisbon. The basin varies between approximately 130 kilometres (81 mi) and 340 kilometres (210 mi) in width and belongs to a family of periatlantic basins such as the Jeanne d'Arc Basin. To the east of the Lusitanian Basin lies the Central Plateau of the Iberian Peninsula. A marginal horst system lies to the west. The Alentejo and Algarve Basins connect to the southern end of the Lusitanian Basin. In the north, it connects to the Porto and Galicia Basins via an undersea ridge.
The Sureste Basin or Salinas-Sureste Basin is a hydrocarbon province located in southeast Mexico. The basin covers an area of 188,000 km2 (73,000 sq mi) and comprises proven reserves of 50 billion barrels of oil. Due to recent successful explorations, the area has been called a Super Basin.
