The Magnolia Field is located along the southern edge of the Titan mini-basin where multiple deep water reservoir sands are positioned across a series of down-to-the-basin and antithetic faults adjacent to salt bodies. Reservoirs are of Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene age. Sand body geometry is related to the interplay between structural movement and sediment input both in time and space.

Sand bodies are defined within a sequence stratigraphic framework. Sequence boundaries are identified at the base of sand-prone intervals observed in well logs and 3D seismic data. Nannofossil and foraminiferal abundance and diversity data suggest that true maximum flooding surfaces are rarely preserved. Flooding surfaces are probably truncated or removed by erosional surfaces associated with sea-level low-stands and zones of re-sedimented microfossils.

Similar to other central Gulf of Mexico intra-slope basins, Magnolia can be subdivided into ponded, transitional and bypassed depositional phases. A ponded phase extends from the Miocene to the Plio-Pleistocene boundary and consists primarily of sheet sands that thin or onlap salt bodies. The latest Pliocene depositional axis is oriented from west to east. Stratigraphic architecture changes dramatically across a sequence boundary separating ponded Pliocene fill from lower Pleistocene transitional fill. This marks a period when an exit point formed to the south and the depositional axis assumed a north–south orientation. A typical lower Pleistocene sequence consists of basal sheet sands overlain initially by erosional, amalgamated channel and later by constructional channel sandstone and mudstone corresponding to the abandonment phase of deposition.

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