Plio-Pleistocene strata of offshore Texas having hydrocarbon exploration potential are restricted to the southeastern continental shelf and upper continental slope. This thick wedge of nearshore and deep-marine sediments firms the west margin of a late Neogene and Quaternary depocenter.

These cross sections illustrate the regional structure and stratigraphy beneath the Texas continental shelf .

Middle-upper Miocene depositional sequences of offshore Texas represent the last regionally significant influx of terrigenous elastic sediments into the western Gulf Coast Basin.

The Fleming Group and its basinward equivalents constitute the stratigraphic record of one of the major Cenozoic depositional episodes of the northern Gulf Coast Basin. The depositional sequence representing the episode is bounded above by the Amphistegina B shale and below by the Anahuac shale.

Large areas of offshore Texas remain unexplored even though sedimentary facies and structural traps favor the generation and accumulation of hydrocarbons.

These cross sections numerically correspond to previously published onshore cross sections (CS0002--Dodge and Posey, 1981) and extend those sections across the continental shelf into the Miocene, a recent target of renewed petroleum exploration.

Variable intensity of diagenesis is the factor primarily responsible for contrasting regional reservoir quality of Tertiary sandstones from the upper and lower Texas coast.