Introduction


The Northeastern Gulf of Mexico remains an underexplored region containing numerous sedimentary basins with a host of siliciclastic and carbonate formations having a high potential for hydrocarbon accumulations. To date, however, comprehensive basin analysis and petroleum system modeling studies have not been performed on any of the basins in this region. Of these basins, the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin has been selected for study because it is the most petroliferous basin in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico and continues to have substantial potential for new reservoirs in Jurassic and Cretaceous strata.

In addition, in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico, small- and medium-size companies are drilling the majority of the exploration wells. These companies do not have the resources to perform basin analysis or petroleum system modeling research studies nor do they have the resources to undertake elaborate information searches through the volumes of publicly available data at the universities, geological surveys, and regulatory agencies in the region.

The Advanced Geologic Basin Analysis Program of the U.S. Department of Energy provides an avenue for studying and evaluating sedimentary basins. This program is designed to improve the efficiency of the discovery of the nation's remaining undiscovered oil resources by providing improved access to information available in the public domain and by increasing the amount of public information on domestic basins.

This report provides the information obtained from Year 1 of this study of the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin. The work during Year 1 focused on inventorying the data files and records of the major information repositories in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico and making these inventories easily accessible in an electronic format. The report achieves the main objective of Year 1 of the project by providing improved access to the information available in the public domain for the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin and thereby increasing the amount of public data available on domestic basins.


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