Depositional processes of black shales in deep water

With deep-water exploration for and production of hydrocarbons becoming pro gressively more extensive and successful, it is clearly important to unders tand the processes of deposition and organic matter preservation of black s hale source rocks in the deep sea. This short contribution aims to summariz e the current state of knowledge in this area and to suggest directions for future research. Black shales are defined as generally fine-grained sedime nts or sedimentary rocks that contain >1% total organic carbon (TOC). Deep water in the marine environment is taken as any depth in excess of storm wa ve base (i.e. approximately 200 m). Much of this synthesis is based on prev ious work by the authors on deep-water processes (Sediment transport and de positional processes (1994) 257; Sedimentry environments, processes, facies and stratigraphy (1996) 395) and black shales (Fine grained sediments: dee p-water processes and facies (1984) 527, AAPG studies in geology no. 40 (19 95); Geol. Soc Spec. Publ., 26 (1987) 287), as well as on general black sha le/source rock compilations (Marine petroleum,l source rocks (1987); Black shales (1994)). (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.