What's New

• New CBTH Newsletter - December 2021 edition (PDF)


• Students and researcher at the University of Houston Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences presented at the 35th Annual Student Research Conference and Alumni & Industry Open House on Friday, April 29. This free event was hosted virtually on Zoom. To view the conference program, click here. For registration information, click here.


• Congrats to Alejandro Escalona and his University of Stavanger team for placing third in the AAPG Europe Region Imperial Barrel Award 2022. After 8 weeks for intensive work and a 2 days of competition between 9 European teams from France, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Poland and Romania the three top teams have been selected by a panel of 6 judges from the energy industry. Congrats to La Salle, University of Naples, and University of Stavanger and the 45 students who participated to this event for having successfully achieved such a unique and important milestone in their education path.


• CBTH PhD student Md Nahidul Hasan presented at the Sedimentary Basin Analysis conference hosted by Pemex on Wednesday, March 9th. His presentation is titled "Thermal stress and expelled hydrocarbons from Mesozoic-Cenozoic source rocks, southern Gulf of Mexico."


• CBTH PhD student Juan Pablo Ramos and Dr. Paul Mann will host a short course titled "Tectonostratigraphic Evolution and Petroleum Systems of Sedimentary Basins in NW South America" at the upcoming AAPG International Conference and Exhibition on April 18-19. Click here for more information, including registration info.


• Congratulations to CBTH students Bryan Moore (1st Place Poster Presentation, MS and early PhD category), Daniella Easley (2nd Place Poster Presentation, Advanced PhD category), and Sean Romito (3rd Place Poster Presentation, Advanced PhD category), who received awards at the Houston Geological Society and University of Houston Robert E. Sheriff lecture series and student poster competition on November 1st.


• The CBTH 2021 Annual Sponsor Meeting was held virtually on Friday, October 8, 2021. Thanks to all who attended!


• CBTH researchers Bryan Moore, Kenneth Shipper, and Paul Mann presented at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Caribbean Technical Symposium and E&P Summit on Recent Activity and Exploration Opportunities in Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. This event was hosted via Zoom on September 14-15, 2021. Click here for more information.


• Dr. Paul Mann was recently interviewed by Jon Rotzien in the Basin Dynamics Bulletin. Click here to read part one of the interview, and click here to read part two.


• Congratulations to CBTH PhD student Nahid Hasan, who presented his research on the Campeche Basin to BHP's Structure and Tectonics group in the U.S. and Australia. Thanks to everyone who participated!


• CBTH students and researchers will be presenting at the IMAGE 2021 meeting on September 26 - October 1, 2021. For more information, including a list of CBTH presentations and abstracts, click here.




• 17 CBTH-affiliated publications will be appearing in the AAPG Memoir 123, which is scheduled to be released this fall. Click here for to view a full list of CBTH publications in this volume. A write-up of this volume is available in the September issue of Revista Maya de Geosciencas. Stay tuned for more details.


• Congrats to CBTH PhD student Nahid Hasan, who received the 3rd Place Poster Gordon I. Atwater Award at GeoGulf 2020. Click here to read more.


• Congratulations to CBTH graduate Eleine Vence (MS '08) and Paul Mann on receiving the 2020 award for Best Paper in Interpretation from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists! Click here to read more.


• Eleine Vence (MS '08) and Paul Mann's award-winnning article on the Guajira margin is featured in this month's issue of Revista Maya de Geosciencas. Click here to read.


• Congrats to all the newly elected members of the Houston Geological Society including former CBTH student Lucia Torrado (PhD, 2018) who was elected secretary.


• Congrats to graduating CBTH students starting 2021 summer internships and jobs: Sean Romito, PhD (summer internship, ConocoPhillips), Ben Miller, MS (summer internship, BP), Mei Liu (Sinopec, Beijing), Hualing Zhang (CNOOC, Beijing), Maddie Bishop, MS (Arena Exploration), Matthew Storey, MS (Arena Exploraton).


• Congratulations to the UH IBA Team, who placed 2nd in the Gulf Coast section of this year's AAPG Imperial Barrrel Award competition. Click here for more information.


• We have completed and delivered the 2020 atlas and FTP deliverables for our Phase V, Year 3 sponsors. We thank you for your patience as we completed this release, and please contact us if you have any questions regarding the 2020 deliverable package.


• Congratulations to CBTH students Md Nahidul Hasan, Hualing Zhang, and Jacob Miller, who received the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place awards, respectively, at AAPG ACE 2020! Click here to read more.

CBTH Proposal and Product Information

Please feel free to browse a copy of our new Phase VI proposal (pdf), our project flyer(.pdf), and our Contributions List of CBTH publications, theses, and presentations.

The CBTH proposed study area for Phase VI is shown below. This 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 conjugate margins of Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, and west Africa.

click map to enlarge

The CBTH study area. Numbers correspond to Phase VI, Years 1-2 student study areas: 1. Mohamed Abdelfatah, PhD candidate 2. Maddie Bishop, MS graduate 3. Nawaz Bugti, PhD candidate 4. Andres Cedeno, PhD candidate 5. Sharon Cornelius, post-doctoral researcher 6. Daniella Easley, PhD candidate 7. Md Nahidul Hasan, PhD candidate 8. Jack Kenning, PhD graduate 9. Stephen Leslie, PhD graduate 10. Mei Liu, PhD graduate 11. Bryan Moore, MS candidate 12. Chesney Petkovsek, PhD candidate 13. Juan Pablo Ramos Vargas, PhD candidate 14. Sean Romito, PhD graduate 15. Kenneth Shipper, PhD candidate 16. Lei Sun, post-doctoral researcher 17. Hualing Zhang, PhD graduate 18. Marcus Zinecker, PhD graduate

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 a vast region affected by the Mesozoic breakup of Pangea (shown in upper inset of map of the study area below). This project, which has been operating since September 1, 2005, includes: 1) known hydrocarbon basins of onshore and the lesser known offshore basins of the Caribbean and northern South America (Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad, Suriname, Guyana, Northern Brazil); 2) the US and Mexico sectors of the Gulf of Mexico; 3) and the rifted-passive margins of the Central in eastern North America and western Europe, and the South Atlantic in South America and west Africa. Our main objectives are to compile all the available digital seismic and published data in a GIS database to provide 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. Our largest concentration of data and current studies are in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico but we have several recently completed and ongoing projects in Brazil and west Africa.

Articles on CBTH Research

• Dr. Paul Mann the subject of an article in the December 2020 issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read.
• CBTH PhD candidate Jack Kenning, who recently won 1st place in the Student Poster Competition at the AAPG 2019 Annual Convention and Exhibition, is the subject of an article in the October 2019 issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read the article.
• The UH IBA Team won first place in the Imperial Barrel Award Program (IBA) of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) International Competition on May 18, 2019. They previously won first place in the Gulf Coast Section competition on March 17. Click here to read a writeup on their achievement in AAPG Explorer.
• The CBTH Project was featured in the December 2018 of GEO ExPro in an article on the conjugate margins of the Gulf of Mexico. The work highlight was the CBTH-supported master's research of Andrew Steier, who is an now an explorationist with the GOM group at Total in Houston. Other CBTH work that this study was based on includes Luan Nguyen (Nguyen and Mann, 2015) and the 2018 PhD study by Pin Lin (now at Chinese National Offshore Oil Company in China). Click here to read.
• CBTH PhD student Lucia Torrado was the subject of an article in the June 2017, issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read.
• Dr. Paul Mann and CBTH MS students Eric Lunn and Andrew Steier were the subject of an article in the June 2017 issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read.
• 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