Re: Huge oil field found in Gulf of Mexico

In article <w-CdndPe6qEaYGDZnZ2dnUVZ_uidnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Dave wrote:
Please forgive me as I know very little about geology. How do sediments
build up 28,000 feet in 100 million years? Where do these sediments come
from, volcanoes?

Remember, the top 7,000 ft of that 28,000 ft is present day seawater.
And they don't explicitly state that the well is vertical (though it's
likely to be a fair approximation).
21,000 ft in 100 million years. 210 ft per million years. 64m per
million years. 64mm per thousand years. 1mm every 15.6 years.
Does that put the sediment accumulation rate into better perspective?
I know next to nothing about sediment sourcing and transport mechanisms in
the Texas-Mexico part of the Gulf of Mexico, but making a first guess that a
major hurricane stirs up enough sediment to deposit a mm of sediment in the
basin (not wildly unreasonable looking at the amount of sludge stirred up in
the elimination of New Orleans), then a major hurricane every 15-odd years
doesn't sound wildly unreasonable either.

--
Aidan Karley, FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland
Written at Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:44 +0100, but posted later.

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