GULF OF MEXICO; GEOLOGIC PROCESSES AND HOW DOES IT WORK

Continental margins, i. e., the Gulf of Mexico, are complicated entities whose intricacies are not well comprehended. The depth of petroleum exploration into the sedimentary wedge ranges from circa one-half to two-thirds of the total wedge thickness of 17-20 km depth. In the 1960s, top of salt features along the Gulf slope were determined. The base of salt is only now being imaged and drilled. The deeper mechanics of salt and sediment wedge advance and the role of fluids, the basin itself, and basement are poorly understood.

Determining the rhythms of the operative geologic processes and their aspects, be they gradual, accelerated, and instantaneous, or local, regional, or margin-spanning is essential to understanding the margin evolution. A unifying notion could be that the entire margin is sliding into the basin. The various discrete component parts(of all sizes, aggregations, and hierarchies) may move at varying rates, yielding compression, extension, and shearing.

Applying the critical Coulomb wegde as a mapping/conceptual tool to a "dynamic" passive margin may be the required framework with which to comprehend the Gulf entity as a single unit. In this effort, cataloguings of geologic processes and their hierarchical expressions, e. g., sedimentation sudbivided into recognizable first through fifth-sixth order intervals, as well as their aspects (rates and extent of occurrence) are proposed.

Possible linkages between tectonics and sedimentation from earliest rifting through the present, including sealevel/depositional/climatic oscillations and basinal/basement interactions, are suggested as potential analytical routes/pathways along which the entire basin as well as the northern continental margin may be comprehended.