What's New

• New CBTH Newsletter - February 2018 edition (PDF)


• Dr. Paul Mann will present two talks at the 1st Meeting on the Lithosphere of the Island of Hispaniola (1ER ENCUENTRO SOBRE LA LITÓSFERA DE LA ISLA DE LA ESPAÑOLA) will be held on March 1-3 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.Click here for more information.


• Congratulations to CBTH PhD student Pin Lin, who won the 2nd Place Poster Award at 2017 the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS) Annual Meeting. Click here to read more.


• Dr. Paul Mann was recently featured on KHOU TV to discuss tsunamis. Click here and here for more information.


• The AAPG Hedberg Conference on Geology of Middle America - The Gulf of Mexico, Yucatan, Caribbean, Grenada and Tobago basins, and their Margins - will be held on July 2-5,2018 in Siguenza, Spain. The event is covened by Jorge Comet, CEPSA, Keith James, Consultant, and Jose Luis Granja Bruna, Univ. Madrid. For more information, click here.


• Kyle Reuber (PhD, May, 2017) received the 2018 Jules Braunstein Memorial Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) for a poster he co-authored at the 2017 AAPG annual meeting in Houston. Click here to read more. Kyle also won the Top 10 Oral Presentation Award at the 2017 AAPG Annual Convention earlier in 2017.


• Paul Mann received the 2018 Robert H. Dott, Sr. Memorial Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) for a volume he co-edited with Dr. Claudio Bartolini. Click here to read more.


• The CBTH Project presented 5 presentations at the Fall AGU meeting in New Orleans on December 11-15, 2017. For a list of CBTH presentations at the meeting, click here. For a full list of all 72 UH EAS posters and talks at the AGU meeting, click here.


• CBTH PhD students Shenelle Gomez and Lucia Torrado recently presented at the UH EAS-HGS Sheriff Lecture on Nov. 27, 2017. Click on their names to view videos of Shenelle and Lucia explaining their posters to AAPG President Charles Sternbach.




• CBTH graduate students Pin Lin, Jack Kenning, Beatriz Serrano-Suarez, and Andrew Steier will be presenting at the AAPG Annual Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 20-23, 2018. Click here for details on presentations and the CBTH sponsor luncheon at AAPG.




• For the second year in a row, the UiS program in Norway - led by Drs. Alejandro Escalona and Nestor Cardozo - was ranked number one in teaching quality at the University of Stavanger and was voted the best graduate program in Norway in a “student barometer survey”. Click here for more information.


• Congrats to Claudio Bartolini and Paul Mann for winning the Robert H. Dott, Sr., Memorial Award for their jointly-edited publication, "Petroleum Geology and Potential of the Colombian Caribbean Margin" (Memoir 108) that was published in 2015. Their award will be presented at the AAPG ACE Conference opening ceremony on Sunday, May 20, 2018, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The volume contained the papers of several now graduated CBTH-UH students including Rocio Bernal (PhD, 2015), Javier Sanchez (PhD, 2015), Luis Carlos Carvajal (PhD, 2017), and Joan Blanco (PhD, 2017), and CBTH-UT Austin student (Henry Campos, MS, 2011).



• The CBTH project hosted its annual sponsors meeting on Friday, October 6. For more information, including the schedule, photos, and more, 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. Click here for more information.


• 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.

CBTH Proposal and Product Information

Please feel free to browse our data using a sample version of our Geomapper application (full version available to sponsors), a copy of our new proposal (.pdf), our project flyer(.pdf), and our Contributions List of CBTH publications, theses, and presentations.

The CBTH proposed study area 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 equatorial, conjugate margins of Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Brazil along with countries in western and eastern Africa.

click map to enlarge

The CBTH study area. Numbers correspond to Phase IV, Year 3 student study areas: 1) M. Kouassi, BS UH, Detrital zircon compilation 2) M. Almatrood, BS UH, GOM well subsidence phases 3) M. Bugti, PhD UH, NW GOM structure, stratigraphy 4) D. Lankford-Bravo, BS UH, Mexican Ridges-Perdido structure 5) R. Ajala, BS UH, Gravity modeling Niger, Mississippi deltas 6) P. Lin, PhD UH, SE GOM basement, structure, stratigraphy 7) A. Gomez, PhD UH, Mexican Ridges-Perdido structure, stratigraphy 8) A. Steier, MS UH, Norphlet reservoirs, N. Yucatan, GOM 9) E. Stibbe, BS UH, Eastern USA-NW Africa conjugate reconstructions 10) A. Escalona, Co-P.I., UiS, Jamaica seeps 11) L.C. Carvajal, PhD, UH, Basin modeling, Colombian basin 12) L. Torrado, PhD, UH, Amazon cone structure, stratigraphy 13) S. Leslie, PhD, UH, Structure, basin modeling, South Caribbean deformed belt 14) A. Escalona, Co-P.I., UiS, Andes flexure modelling 15) J. Blanco, PhD, UH, Structure NW offshore Venezuela 16) S. Martinez, BS, UH, Tectonic geomorphology, Puerto Rico 17) S. Gomez, PhD, UH, Barbados prism structure, stratigraphy 18) O. Zavala, BS, UH, Demerara-NW Africa conjugate reconstructions 19) P. Carr, BS, UH, Compilation of OAE events in well data, NE South America 20) E. Lunn, PhD, UH, Ceara-Barreirinhas basins structure, stratigraphy 21) L. Zhang, BS, UH, Fission track constraints on SE Brazil margin 22) P. Loureiro, PhD UH, Santos-Campos gravity, structure, stratigraphy 23) K. Reuber, PhD, UH, South Atlantic volcanic conjugate margins 24) B. Serrano-Suarez, PhD, NW Africa gravity, structure, stratigraphy 25) J. Kenning, PhD, Namibia stratigraphy, basin modeling 26) M. Copley, BS, Mozambique basin gravity, structure

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.

AAPG Explorer Articles 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 PhD student Lucia Torrado was the subject of an article in the June 2017, issue of AAPG Explorer. Click here to read.

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. Click here to read.

CBTH Calendar of Events

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