August 19 - 21, 2008
Museum of Natural Sciences IMAX Theater
Houston, Texas

Convenors:

Scot Fraser (Cobalt International Energy)
Mike Lentini (Cobalt International Energy)
Alastair Fraser (BP)
Rob Gawthorpe (Univ of Manchester)
Andrew Hurst (Univ of Aberdeen)
Dave Reynolds (ExxonMobil Exploration Co)
Tony Doré (StatoilHydro)
Robin Hamilton (Shell International E&P)

Register Online

Following on from the highly successful Return to Rifts conference hosted by the Geological Society of London in April 2005, the conference entitled "Rifts renaissance - stretching the crust and extending exploration frontiers" seeks to challenge the validity of current rift models paradigms. These paradigms underpin our fundamental understanding and exploration of pre-cursor rift basins and continental rift basins. Numerous aspects of crustal evolution and rifting models remain contentious and new sub-surface data have highlighted apparent contradictions to the current application of lithospheric extension and heat flow models to the exploration of basins for hydrocarbon resources. Understanding the implications of new rifting models allows new play concepts to be developed in areas previously considered unprospective. The mechanisms and implications for alternative hypotheses require testing against empirical observation. With that in mind, the conference will seek to attract the best in class technical insights from leading academic institutions with the latest concepts developed by leading technical experts inside the petroleum industry. The sharing of new datasets and technical observations with theoretical models will constrain the next phase of exploration where rift processes are a fundamental aspect of basin development.

Abstracts that address the following suggested themes have been requested:

• New data that challenge current rift dogma
• uncharacteristic features of rift basins from empirical observations or models
• Accreted continental terrains and pre-existing tectonic fabric - the role of crust conditioning
• Continuous versus episodic rifting how do we stretch the crust and how does it deform?
• Continental oceanic transitions - what do we observe?
• What happens when we rift to drift? - break-up sequences and transitions?
• Exploring rifts - the petroleum systems, plays and the future potential
• Comparative rift provinces - does size matter?
• Numerical modeling of lithospheric extension - exploration implications
• Extensional systems and syn-tectonic facies - can we be more predictive?
• What's wrong with the North Atlantic?
• Pre-drift inversion - fact or fiction, understanding the stress evolution?