Characteristics of submarine landslides and their implications for petroleum geology

Submarine landslide is a type of sediment transport body that occurs widely in the regions from outer continental shelf to upper continental slope and to deep-sea plain due to gravity instability. It is an important transport process of seafloor sediments. Its strong power of erosion could transport a huge amount of sediments from continental shelf to deep sea. A landslide event has an important impact on submarine hydrocarbon accumulation and distribution because of its special internal structure. This mini-review summarizes studies on submarine landslide and its role in shaping and re-working marine hydrocarbon resources, specified the characteristics in spatial distribution and vertical structure of submarine landslides, and revealed preliminarily the petrophysical characteristics of landslides. Based on the above-mentioned works, the roles of submarine landslides in both positive and negative manner, on submarine oil and gas reservoirs was analyzed in terms of provenance, reservoir, caprock, and variations in seafloor temperature and pressure. Finally, combined with the current research progresses, we pointed out that the future direction of research shall focus on the microscale characteristics of submarine landslides, on the relationship between submarine landslides and submarine oil and gas reservoirs, and on the prevention in submarine-landslide–risk regions against possible disaster from trigging during offshore operation of oil and gas development.