Abstract: Exploration Techniques of Continental Slopes and Rises

Peter Lehner

The first step in deep-water exploration now underway is to search for subsided parts of former continental shelves. Exploration techniques and methods in these regions are the same as those used in unexplored basins of the continental shelf.

Far more important in size and volume are the large sedimentary wedges in the oceanic parts of marginal basins below the continental rise. Accumulation in these poorly structured basins must be predominantly in stratigraphic traps.

To make these potential resources exploitable, the exploration risk must be reduced by improving and developing methods and tools which allow identification of localized hydrocarbon accumulations and estimation of recoverable volumes by means of geophysics and geochemistry prior to drilling.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90968©1977 AAPG-SEPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, Washington, DC