The discovery of billions of barrels of oil offshore Guyana by ExxonMobil since 2015 has focused the attention of the geological community on the eastern boundary of the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates. For the first time in history, commercial oil accumulations have opened a new petroleum province in Upper Cretaceous sandstone turbidites of the Guyana Basin offshore Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana, along the northeastern corner of South America. Added to the well-known petroleum potential of Venezuela, Trinidad, and Barbados, these recent oil discoveries have triggered an explosion of exploratory activities by international oil companies across the eastern Caribbean region, including the acquisition of giant 3-D seismic surveys offshore, multiple wildcat wells, and the award of numerous blocks in recent petroleum bid rounds. Undoubtedly, this region has arrived as a key area for future oil and gas exploration.

AAPG Memoir 123 consists of 24 chapters representing the most recent and innovative geological and geophysical studies conducted around the southeastern Caribbean by many international geoscientists. The book is multidisciplinary in scope and includes an extensive variety of topics, including petroleum systems, source rock geochemistry, plate tectonics, exploration results, and hydrocarbon discoveries, play fairways, basin studies, sequence stratigraphy, geological modeling, diagenesis, structural geology, shale tectonics, physical stratigraphy, sedimentology, geophysical potential fields (gravity and magnetics), regional geology, paleostress, and large-scale tectonic reconstructions.

This book is a required text for professionals in the petroleum industry, research, academia, and petroleum consulting and service companies.