Re: Huge oil field found in Gulf of Mexico


dave wrote:
So at one time the Gulf of Mexico was 28,000 feet deep? And what areas are
loosing sediments? Not all areas of land (even under the sea) can
accumulate can they? If so would the diameter of the Earth be increasing?
If some are reducing and some are increasing then would that constitute an
"evening" of all surfaces? So mountains are being reduced as the sea beds
are building up?

DaveL


"Aidan Karley" <doIlookDAFTenoughTOpost@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in message
news:VA.000010d6.0c20a1cf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.


Whenever some worm would come up from Houston or some other hell hole,
the roughnecks would all have to act "safe" and instead of throwing the
chain they'd put it in a paint can and pass it around and round the
pipe. As soon as they saw his truck go away and over a hill they'd
throw that paint can away and get back to doing it right.

.

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