What's New

• New CBTH Newsletter - August 2017 edition (PDF)


• The CBTH project will host its annual sponsors meeting on Friday, October 6 from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (lunch included). For more information, including the schedule and meeting location, click here.


• CBTH students and researchers will present at the upcoming 2017 GCAGS Meeting in San Antonio. Click here to view a list of presentations.


• Congrats to Lisa Watson for completing her PhD dissertation at the University of Utrecht, titled, "Spatial-based assessment at continental to global scale: Case studies in petroleum exploration and ecosystem services." Lisa started working with the CBTH project in 2005 as an sophomore geology major at the University of Texas. Following her graduation she moved to Norway in 2009 where she continued working with the CBTH project at the Univ of Stavanger. Lisa previously completed her MS at the University of Utrecht in 2011. She is now an associate professor in GIS studies at the University of Stavanger and continues to work with the CBTH project and attend the yearend meetings at the University of Houston.


• CBTH students and researchers have submitted abstracts for the upcoming 2017 Fall AGU Meeting in New Orleans. Click here to view a list of submitted presentations.


• Congrats to Patrick Loureiro who has completed his PhD with CBTH on the rifted margin of southeastern Brazil and submitted the final version of his dissertation to UH. On July 17, Patrick started his full-time job with Hess in Houston working with the Hess Eastern Canada offshore exploration group.


• Congrats to both Kyle Reuber and Luis Carlos Carvajal who both completed their PhDs for the May, 2017, graduation deadline and participated in the University of Houston commencement ceremony on May 13 at Houston’s NGR stadium. Kyle will continue to work full-time for Ion on multiclient studies along Atlantic margins. Luis Carlos is working a post-PhD, basin modeling study with CBTH on the Colombian and Venezuelan basins and present is results at the yearend meeting on September 29.


• Two articles involving the CBTH Project will be featured in the June 2017 Issue of AAPG Explorer. The first, available here, concerns CBTH PhD Student Lucia Torrado's recent 1st place win at the AAPG Student Poster Competition, while the second, available here, concerns the UH IBA Team's recent win in the international competition at the AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibiton.


• Paul Mann, Shenelle Gomez, Kyle Reuber, and Tricia Alvarez all attended and presented at the 6th Geological Conference of the GSTT in Trinidad on May 22-24. 2017. Mann and former CBTH PhD student, Tricia Alvarez - now an assistant professor in petroleum geosciences at the University of Trinidad and Tobago - provided a one-day, shortcourse to 26 meeting participants on the topic: Recent Developments in Understanding the Regional Tectonics and Petroleum Geology of the Trinidad Area. Click here for more information.


• Congratulations to CBTH PhD student Lucia Torrado, who placed 1st in the student poster competition at this year's AAPG annual convention.


• Congratulations to the 2017 UH Imperial Barrel team who won 1st place in international competition at the AAPG Annual Convention in Houston on April 2nd.


• CBTH students and researchers will be presenting at the 2017 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition in Houston on April 2-5. Click here for a full list of UH EAS presentations and posters. The CBTH Project will also host its annual sponsor luncheon on April 3rd at The Grove at 12 noon. E-mail us if you would like to attend on behalf of your company.


• Congratulations to the 2017 UH Imperial Barrel team who won 1st place in the Gulf Coast competition with nine other universities. The team will compete in the international competition at the AAPG ACE meeting on Saturday, April 1 in Houston. Two the five team members are CBTH-supported grad students: Eric Lunn (captain) and Andrew Steier. Click here for more information.


• Congrats to CBTH-supported undergrad Emily Stibbe for receiving an honorable mention student poster award at Rice IRESS meeting held on February 23-24, 2017. Click here for more information.


• Congrats to CBTH-supported undergrad Sabrina Martinez for receiving a summer fellowship at the NASA Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston for the summer of 2017. Click here for more information.


• Congrats to Shenelle Gomez for receiving a summer internship with Shell. Shenelle also presented at the Houston Geological Society International Dinner at the Westchase Hilton on Monday, February 20, 2017, on the topic of “Tectonostratigraphic evolution of the Barbados accretionary prism and its controls on hydrocarbon prospectivity in offshore Barbados.”


• Congrats to Joan Blanco (PhD student, CBTH project) and Alexandre Silva (PhD student, EAS) for placing third place in the SEG Challenge Bowl World Finals at the SEG meeting in Dallas in October. The first place team was from Brigham Young University and the second place team was from the University of Calgary. Click here to read more.


• CBTH students and researchers will be presenting on Monday, November 7 at the 18th Annual Sheriff Lecture presented by HGS and the UH Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. To view the event invite, click here. For a full list of EAS presentations, click here.


• Congratulations to CBTH PhD students Patrick Loureiro and Shenelle Gomez for passing their dissertation proposal meetings on October 26!


• The CBTH Annual Sponsors Meeting was held on September 30, 2016 at the University of Houston in Cemo Hall, Room 109. Click here more details.
  
  
• Congratulations to CBTH students Andrew Steier, Rasheed Ajala, and Kyle Reuber, who won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, respectively, at the 15th Conference on Africa E&P hosted by HGS/PESGB.


• Congratulations to Patrick Loureiro who accepted a full-time offer with Hess Corporation in Houston starting in the middle of 2017, following the completion of his UH PhD study on the Brazil-West Africa conjugate margins. Patrick was a summer intern for Hess in the summer of 2016 working on NW Africa and completed his MS with the CBTH project in 2014 on the Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands area.


• Congratulations to Marie de los Santos, CBTH-supported UH undergrad geology major, who completed her master’s degree on isotope studies in August, 2016, at the University of Arizona and is now working as a technician at the University of Arizona Isotope lab.


• Congratulations to Lourdes Rodriguez who competed her MS degree on the Espino rift of Venezuela and is starting a full time job as a geophysicist with Sanchez Energy in Houston where she has been working parttime for the past year.


• Congratulations to Matt Copley who graduated with his BS from UH and is starting the MS program with the industry-funded reservoir characterization group at Colorado School of Mines. As a CBTH-supported undergrad at UH, Matt completed a study of the Somali basin of East Africa that he presented at the 2016 AAPG Annual meeting in Calgary.


• Congratulations to Javier Sanchez! Javier joined the Department of Geology at EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia, in July 2016, where he is an assistant, tenure-track professor teaching structural geology, tectonics, basin analysis and petroleum geology. Javier was a post-doctoral researcher with the CBTH project from September 2015, to June 2016, where he completed several articles on basin modeling and geomorphology in northern Colombia. We thank Javier for his five years of productive and dedicated service to the CBTH project both as a PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher and wish him luck in his new professor position. We hope to continue collaborations with Javier and his colleagues and geoscience students at EAFIT University.


• Congratulations to the CBTH student awardees Shenelle Gomez and Luis Carlos Carvajal, who received second and third place, respectively, in the 2016 AAPG-ACE student poster competition in Calgary, Canada. Four CBTH students were selected from a pool of 90 first-authored, accepted abstracts to the Calgary meeting for the competition judged by a panel of 5-6 judges. CBTH students Naila Dowla and Lucia Torrado also participated in the student competition of 15 posters. Click here for more information on CBTH at AAPG 2016.



• CBTH Geomapper is now back online! The application is accessible through the Sponsor Login page for participating sponsors.


• CBTH student Luan Nguyen gave a talk at the Geophysical Society of Houston: Potential fields SIG Dinner on May 19th
  
  
• Congratulations for Pin Lin’s AAPG grant-in-aid that will fund her study of source rock maturity in the South Florida basin. She will travel to the Florida State Geological Survey core faculty in Tallahassee to sample cores. Analysis will be done at the UH Petroleum Geochemistry Lab. Click here to read more.

CBTH Proposal and Product Information

Please feel free to browse a sample of our database, a copy of our new Phase IV proposal (.pdf), our project flyer(.pdf), and our Contributions List of CBTH publications, theses, and presentations (updated June 2016).

Click here to view the latest CBTH Newsletter (June 2016 edition) for information on our students, sponsors, and project activities. If you would like to see more of our compilation, please become a sponsor today!

The CBTH-Phase IV proposed study area is shown in the large boxed areas. The CBTH-Phase IV area includes the oil-rich areas of the Mexican and US sectors of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and northern South America, as well as the equatorial, conjugate margins of Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Brazil along with countries in western and eastern Africa.

click map to enlarge

Numbers on map refer to areas of proposed work described in the text of the Phase IV proposal (revised in 2015): 1 = USA and Mexican Gulf of Mexico; 2 = Florida and Bahamas region; 3 = East Coast of the USA (conjugate rifted margin of NW Africa); 4 = Nicaraguan Rise in Jamaica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and ; 5 = Deepwater areas of Colombian and Venezuelan basins; 6= Panama accretionary prism; 7 = Onland basins of Colombia; 8 = Pacific margin basins of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru; 9 = Foreland basins of Peru and Ecuador; 10 = Llanos foreland basin of Colombia; 11 = Venezuelan foreland basins; 12 = Trinidad, Barbados, and Barbados accretionary prism; 13 = Northeastern South America in Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil (conjugate rifted margin of Equatorial Africa); 14 = Southern Brazil and Uruguay (conjugate rifted margin of southwest Africa); 15 = Northwest margin of Africa; 16 = Equatorial margin of Africa; 17 = East African margin.

Goals of the CBTH Project

The CBTH Project seeks to create a GIS-based digital and atlas synthesis of available seismic and well data to define the regional hydrocarbon potential of the unexplored Caribbean region.  This project, which started on September 1, 2005, covers known hydrocarbon basins of onshore and the less known offshore basins of the Caribbean and northern South America (Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad, Suriname, Guyana, Northern Brazil).  Our main objectives are to compile all the available digital seismic and published data in a regional basis - particularly offshore Venezuela, Colombia and Trinidad - to create an integrated geologic synthesis of tectonosequences, depositional systems, major structures, petroleum geology, paleogeographic maps, and quantitative plate reconstructions for a better understanding of the hydrocarbon systems in the region.  To our knowledge, a project involving this amount of data and of this scope has never previously been attempted for northern South America.  Specific objectives include the following: 1) Identify source and location of main sedimentary depocenters; 2) Continuity of tectonosequences and terranes; and 3) Produce the first offshore geologic synthesis of the Caribbean region.

AAPG Explorer Article on CBTH Research

The CBTH Project was the subject of an article in the October 2012 issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read.

CBTH Calendar of Events