Abstract Of all the countries in the world considered to be oil rich, Mexico is the only one that consistently has been losing production and reserves in the last ten years. Even though Mexico has five major producing provinces: two for oil (the Southeast and the Tampico–Misantla basins) and three for gas (the Sabinas, Burgos and Veracruz basins), and has seven more with potential, (California, Gulf of Cortès, Chihuahua, Sierra Madre Oriental, Sierra de Chiapas, Progreso shelf, and the deep Gulf of Mèxico), its output and reserves have declined consistently. Many reasons can be attributed for these results, and as this note proves, least of them is the country’s endowment of oil and gas resources. The problem is that Mexico, since 1938, has had only one oil company responsible for all of its upstream activities and even though Pemex’s performance is comparable with that of most of the majors’ (it is world’s third largest in terms of production), it is impossible that all the remaining potential of the entire country can be found and produced with only one company, no matter how large, wealthy, efficient, technologically advanced, and successful it can be. The good news is that once the country opens up for third-party participation in exploration, which will eventually take place, results are going to be spectacular. So far there has only been a timid opening for development and exploitation opportunities.

Abstract Information from modern shallow-water carbonate depositional settings is commonly incorporated into the analysis of reservoir-scale heterogeneity problems and exploration-scale plays. The modern analogs provide a means to illustrate the distribution of porous carbonate facies within the overall setting. Often these analogs become an important part of the geologic model because they show the scale, trend, and interrelationships of facies that might be related to reservoir and nonreservoir distribution. Over the last few years, we have repeatedly been approached by Chevron's geologists to help supply analog examples for their work. We have been able to direct them to the appropriate literature, and in a few cases, have supplied a photograph or drawing for their use. In most cases, however, we were unable to readily provide to them good illustrative material for these examples. As a result of this frustrating situation, we initiated a project to acquire and process Landsat and SPOT satellite images from select key modern carbonate areas that should help fulfill the needs of most exploration and development geologists for analogs. These images from several "classic" areas, including southern Florida, the Bahamas, the Caicos Platform in the British West Indies, Yucatan and Chinchorro Bank in Mexico, Belize, Great Barrier Reef and Shark Bay in Australia, and the coastline of Abu Dhabi (Figures 1A-1C), form the basis of this book.In addition to their use as analogs, the satellite images can be important teaching materials for carbonate training courses. Many of the same modern areas are used as case studies to

Abstract The book (147 p., color throughout) was originally published by AAPG in 1994 as a series of satellite images of modern carbonate environments to depict modern analogs in real-world scale to use for comparison to subsurface examples. Bahamas, Abu Dhabi, Belize, Great Barrier Reef, Caicos Platform—all are classic modern carbonate areas.

Abstract Description of provinces. —The continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico extends from the shore line of parts of the United States and of Mexico outward into the Gulf of Mexico to the abrupt change in bottom slope which is the boundary between this shelf and the continental slope. This change takes place at depths of water in some places as shallow as 400 feet, elsewhere as deep as 700 feet, but a sufficiently good approximation as to the outer edge of the shelf is the 200-meter (656 feet) depth contour which is depicted on the American Geographical Society's Map of the Americas, sheets 1A (1944) and 1-E (1948). The area of the continental shelf thus defined is 235,000 square miles, and to June 1, 1950, 165 wells have been drilled, distributed as follows. The shelf adjoins the following political subdivisions. General geology. —Obviously, with so few wells drilled within the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico, it is difficult to present any detailed data from drilling within it. There are, however, some extrapolations from the results of drilling on adjacent land areas, with their geophysical surveys, and from a very limited amount of available geophysical mapping within the continental shelf area which are significant. These data are incorporated in the following discussion. The Gulf of Mexico is constricted on the east by two peninsulas: the Florida Peninsula and the Yucatan Peninsula. Between these two peninsulas, the Gulf is bounded by a roughly circular coast line. On land adjacent to this