This volume consists of papers presented at the M. T. Halbouty Continental Margins Conference, held at the Tremont House in Galveston, Texas, February 5-9, 1989. The conference was sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Departments of Geophysics and Oceanography of Texas A&M University. Convenors were Joel Watkins, Gregory Mountain, and Feng Zhiqiang.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following companies: Amoco Production Company, Chevron Oil Field Research Company, Enserch Exploration Inc., Exxon Company International, Howell Corporation, Maxus Energy Corporation, Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, Mobil Oil Corporation, Pennzoil Exploration and Production Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, Primary Fuels Inc., Standard Oil Production Company, Shell Oil Company, Texaco Overseas Holdings Inc., and Unocal Corporation. Financial support provided by these companies underwrote the travel expenses of many foreign participants and U.S. students as well as some of the costs incurred in the production of this volume. Without this generous support, neither the conference nor this memoir would have been possible.
Anita Fickey, Michele Beal, Debbie Waits, and Crissy Ponzio of the Texas A&M Geophysics Department staff made arrangements, retyped manuscripts, and performed a myriad of administrative chores necessary for organizing the conference and editing the manuscripts. Their always cheerful assistance smoothed the road to publication.
One of the worst ice storms in the history of southeast Texas descended on the area immediately before the start of the conference. For a period of time, the only road to and from the mainland was closed because of the severeicing