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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
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The Houma embayment is a structural downwarping of the middle Miocene continental shelf which was filled contemporaneously with a northward-thickening wedge of deltaic-plain sandstone and deep-marine shale. The embayment wedge is terminated on the north by an arcuate, down-to-the-coast, growth-fault
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system. Toward the south, the wedge thins to a few hundred feet where it is down-faulted below existing well control by post-embayment faulting. A series of paleostructural maps demonstrates that the basin subsided by northward rotational tilting into the boundary-fault system. Hydrocarbons accumulate where regional north dip is interrupted by local south dip or, as in most cases, where northward-plunging noses are terminated on the south by faulting. It is the thesis of this paper that regional north dip and thickening of rotational blocks into arcuate down-to-the-coast growth faults can be observed in all similar embayment-type structures, of which there are many in south Louisiana. The Houma embayment is at relatively shallow depths, and the presence of major hydrocarbon accumulati ns in the embayment wedge has encouraged a great amount of deep drilling. Information obtained from the deep drilling allows the structural history of the Houma embayment to be reconstructed accurately and used as a model for deep exploratory drilling in other areas.
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