Reports
HomeAbout PTTCProducer Advisory GroupEGR Staff Calendar NewsletterState Oil & Gas InfoOil & Gas Reports and StudiesData & DatabasesRLO ResourcesLinks Workshop RegistrationFunding AcknowledgementsWHAT'S NEW
Mancini, E.A., Puckett, T.M., Parcell, W.C., and Panetta, B.J., 1999: Topical Reports 1 and 2, Basin Analysis of the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin and Petroleum System Modeling of the Jurassic Smackover Formation, eastern Gulf Coastal Plain, U.S. Department of Energy Report, 425 p.
Abstract
The Mississippi Interior Salt Basin is the most productive sedimentary basin for oil and natural gas in the southeastern United States. Changes in the domestic petroleum industry in the United States resulting from economic and regulatory reasons have made drilling for oil and gas onshore largely uneconomical for large petroleum companies. Small- and medium-sized independent companies are now drilling essentially all of the new onshore exploration wells. These companies do not, however, have the exploration resources that are available to the major petroleum companies, thereby increasing the uncertainty and risk in drilling exploratory wells. In addition, no comprehensive basin or petroleum system analysis has been performed for the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin to date. This report presents the results of the initial phase of such a research effort.
Sedimentation in the basin was associated with rifted margin tectonics. The depositional history includes pre-rift, syn-rift and post-rift sedimentation. The stratigraphic framework of the basin was defined on the basis of five regional cross sections comprised of 48 key wells totaling 837,818 ft of stratigraphic section. The burial and thermal histories of the basin are directly linked to the tectonic and depositional histories that are closely related to the origin of the Gulf of Mexico. The history includes phases of crustal attenuation, rifting and sea-floor spreading and subsidence. Basin modeling indicates that variation in sediment accumulation rate is related to lithology, unit thickness, and duration of deposition. The highest mean sediment accumulation and tectonic subsidence rates were recorded for Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous strata.
Maturity modeling indicates that Upper Jurassic carbonate mudstones (rich in algal kerogen) were effective regional source rocks throughout the basin. Oil generation commenced from these carbonate mud-stones in the Early to Late Cretaceous and continued into the Paleogene. Upper Cretaceous black shales (rich in herbaceous kerogen) were effective local source rocks in the area of the Perry sub-basin. Oil generation was initiated from these shales in the Paleogene. Lower Cretaceous shales are possible local source rocks in the Perry sub-basin area. The burial and thermal histories of Paleogene shales were not con-ducive for the generation of hydrocarbons in this basin.
This report is in PDF format.
You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to read it. You can download it here for free!
You will also need a compression utility program such as WinZip or Aladdin Expander to uncompress the file. You can get one free at http://download.com
Download the report.
basin.zip -winzip compressed. (14 MB)
basin.tar.gz -uniz tar and gzipped compression. (14 MB)