United States

The petroleum geology of the Mississippi Canyon, Atwater Valley, western DeSoto Canyon, and western Lloyd Ridge protraction areas, offshore northern Gulf of Mexico, is controlled by the interaction of salt tectonics and high sedimentation rate during the Neogene and resulted in a complex distribution of reservoirs and traps.

Thunder Horse and Mensa are two of the largest fields of oil or gas, respectively, in the northern deep-water Gulf of Mexico. The fields are present in adjacent intraslope minibasins, located approximately 12 mi (19 km) apart in Mississippi Canyon. Both fields illustrate important complexities of deep-water sedimentation.

The Mensa and Thunder Horse intraslope minibasins in south-central Mississippi Canyon, northern deep-water Gulf of Mexico, had a linked structural evolution from the Early Cretaceous through the late Miocene. Analysis of the two minibasins illustrates the complexities of deep-water sedimentation and salt tectonics in intraslope minibasins.

The petroleum systems of two adjacent Miocene intraslope minibasins in the northern deep-water Gulf of Mexico are modeled to investigate why one of them produces primarily gas but the other produces oil. Specifically, the Mensa field produces gas from a faulted four-way closure that overlies a turtle structure, whereas the adjacent Thunder Horse field produces from a turtle structure with four-way structural closure.