Deep-water (below wave base) processes, although generally hidden from view, shape the sedimentary record of more than 65% of the Earth’s surface, including large parts of ancient mountain belts. This book aims to inform advanced-level undergraduate and postgraduate students, and professional Earth scientists with interests in physical oceanography and hydrocarbon exploration and production, about many of the important physical aspects of deep-water (mainly deep-marine) systems. The authors consider transport and deposition in the deep sea, trace-fossil assemblages, and facies stacking patterns as an archive of the underlying controls on deposit architecture (e.g., seismicity, climate change, autocyclicity). Topics include modern and ancient deep-water sedimentary environments, tectonic settings, and how basinal and extra-basinal processes generate the typical characteristics of basin slopes, submarine canyons, contourite mounds and drifts, submarine fans, basin floors and abyssal plains.

The ~300-m-thick deep marine Guaso system is the youngest deposit of the deep marine fill of the Mid Eocene Ainsa basin, Spanish Pyrenees. It is overlain by ~150-200 m of fine-grained slope and deltaic sediments. Unlike the older turbidite systems in the Ainsa basin (canyon and channelised systems) the Guaso sandbodies are laterally extensive, built by laterally-switching 3-10-m-deep erosional channels, and confined only by basin structure during deposition. The oldest system, Guaso I, displays cyclic sedimentation packages and up slope thinning suggesting a sediment source greatly influenced by fourth order controls and not directly linked to the feeder system. Total Organic Carbon values in the fine grained sediment above Guaso I records suspected climatic controls in the order of 41kyr. The youngest system, Guaso II, is generally coarser with no cyclic sedimentation packages, suggesting a sediment source connected to the feeder system and not as effected by subtle climatic changes. The Guaso II system spans deep marine to slope environments. The first-order control on basin-scale accommodation was tectonicallydriven subsidence with eustasy the most likely driving factor for sand deposition (probably the ~400 kyr Milankovitch beat). The overlying Sobrarbe Deltaic Complex is characterised by alternating thin, sheet like sandstones and heavily bioturbated sandstone on a marlstone prone slope up to the delta front sandstones. The critical end-signature of deep-marine Guaso deposition was a phase of net tectonic uplift creating a narrower and shallower basin morphology, allowing the feeder delta to prograde to at or near the shelf edge. At the next eustatic sealevel fall sediment input patterns were not favourable to the cutting of canyons or deeply-incised slope channels, creating an unconfined turbidite system. Such clastic slopes often characterise the end-signature for the infill of other shallowing-up deep-marine basins where sediment supply is high and shelf edge deltas are present.

Pursuing an innovative, global approach, this unique book provides an updated review of the geology of Iberia and its continental margins from a geodynamic perspective. Owing to its location close to successive plate margins, Iberia has played a pivotal role in the geodynamic evolution of the Gondwanan, Rheic, Pangea, Tethys and Eurasian plates over the last 600 Ma of Earth’s history. The geological record starts with the amalgamation of Gondwana in the Neoproterozoic, which was succeeded by the rifting and spreading of the Rheic ocean; its demise, which led to the amalgamation of Pangea in the late Paleozoic; the rifting and spreading of several arms of the Neotethys ocean in the Mesozoic Era and their ongoing closure, which was responsible for the Alpine orogeny. The significant advances in the last 20 years have increasingly attracted international interest in exploring the geology of the Iberian Peninsula. This volume focuses on the Cenozoic basins of the Iberian Geology and consequently the most recent sedimentary features in the Iberian Geology apart of the active ones. In this book, you will find a detailed explanation of the alpine foreland basins, the extension of the west Mediterranean as well as the latest magmatism in Iberia.

Discovery of the Arbroath, Montrose and Forties fields initiated intensive exploration of the Tertiary deep-marine play in the North Sea region. Subsequent discoveries demonstrated the success of this play and the geological diversity of the depositional systems. The play is now mature and in many areas the remaining exploration potential is likely to be dominated by small, subtle traps with a major component of stratigraphic trapping. Economically marginal discoveries need an in-depth understanding of subsurface uncertainty to mitigate risk with limited appraisal wells. Mature fields require detailed geological understanding in the search for the remaining oil. This volume focuses on the regional depositional setting of these deep-marine systems, providing a stratigraphic and palaeogeographical context for exploration, and development case histories that outline the challenges of producing from these reservoirs. The fields are arranged around the production life cycle, describing the changing needs of geological models as the flow of static and dynamic data refines geological understanding and defines the nature of new opportunities as fields mature.

A comprehensive and richly illustrated overview of the Gulf of Mexico Basin, including its reservoirs, source rocks, tectonics and evolution.