Abstract Since initial exploration success more than a century ago in onshore California, more than 872 discoveries with total reserves >137 billion barrels oil equivalent (BBOE) have been made in deep-water deposits. A rapid increase in such discoveries began in the 1970s and more than 350 are expected in this decade based on historic trends. More than 80% of these discoveries are in offshore basins. North America dominates the number of total discoveries as well as reserves but there is an increasing number of African and Brazilian discoveries and fields. Reservoir rocks range in age from Ordovi-cian to Pleistocene. However, more than 90% are in Cretaceous or younger rocks. Passive margins have been the setting for most of these accumulations, and most are in slope depositional environments. However, recent technological advances allowing drilling in deeper waters will lead to more discoveries in lower slope to basin depositional environments. Further statistics on hydrocarbons, reservoir drive, trap types, porosity, and hydrocarbon column heights are discussed from a commercially available database compiled by Cossey and Associates Inc.

Abstract The Paleocene chicontepec Formation outcrops along the western margin of the Tampico embayment, also known as the Tam- pico-Misantla Basin, located in northeastern Mexico. The sequence records deposition in a deep-marine, foreland basin between the Golden Lane atoll and the Sierra Madre Oriental. In the northern part of this outcrop belt, slope deposition is recorded primarily by undeformed and deformed thin-bedded turbidites with occasional sand-rich lobes, channel-fills, and debrites. The sedimenttransport and slumping direction was to the east and southeast

Abstract The informally named Cigar and Dog outcrops are amalgamated channels and minor mass-transport complexes within a Tortonian-age submarine-fan complex in the Tabernas basin of southeast Spain. The submarine-fan complex within the chozas Formation has been mapped in detail by Kleverlaan (1989) . Fie named the lowermost, sand-rich fan complex “System 1” in a time-slice reconstruction of the basin. The entire System 1 fan complex measures about 6 km (3.7 mi) in an east-west direction and 3 km (1.9 mi) in a north—south direction. The fan consists of a series of linear, coalesced, gravel-filled channels that feed into a sandy lobe consisting of stacked, gravel- to sand-filled scours. The Dog and Cigar outcrops are located within this sandy lobe (Figures 1 , 2 ). This sand-rich lobe is encased in mudstones and has a maximum thickness of 180 m (591 ft). The sediments are composed of lithic fragments of schists, gneisses, and a minor amount of marble, indicating provenance from the north from a paleovalley incised into the metamorphic rocks of the northern basin margin ( Figure 2 ). The typical internal architecture of System 1 is that of a stack of deep, relatively narrow scours filled with sandstone and pebbly sandstone with some laterally extensive, well-stratified beds. Mud drapes and heterolithics occur with a wide range of lateral extents, but there are no basinwide mud blankets. There is no apparent vertical trend within the overall system, such as thinning- and fining- or thickening- and coarsening-upward, and only a slight average decrease in grain size and increase in mud toward the distal margins of the system.