Abstract The U.S. Atlantic continental margin contains four basins: The Georges Bank basin, the Baltimore Canyon Trough, the Carolina Trough, and the Blake Plateau basin. For the purposes of this paper, the Southeast Georgia Embayment and Bahamas Platform are included with the Blake Plateau basin, to which they are stratigraphically related. The shelves of all but the Carolina Trough have been tested to varying extents; the slopes have been tested only minimally. The tests have included 51 wells at a cost of over two billion dollars. No commercial discoveries have been reported.