Regional tectonics in relation to Permo-Carboniferous hydrocarbon potential, Southern North Sea Basin: Difference between revisions

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By K. W. Glennie Department of Geology & Petroleum Geology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 2UE


== Contents ==
From: Pages 1–12 of Carboniferous hydrocarbon resources: the southern North Sea and surrounding onshore areas, edited by J. D. Collinson, D. J. Evans, D. W. Holliday, N. S. Jones. Published as volume 7 in the Occasional Publications series of the Yorkshire Geological Society, © Yorkshire Geological Society 2005.


[[Regional tectonics in relation to Permo-Carboniferous hydrocarbon potential, Southern North Sea Basin|Regional tectonics in relation to Permo-Carboniferous hydrocarbon potential, Southern North Sea Basin by K. W. Glennie]]
== Summary ==
The tectonic development of the Southern North Sea Basin during the Permo-Carboniferous was the outcome of geological events that began in the Early Palaeozoic when Scotland–Greenland and England–Baltica were on opposite sides of the Iapetus Ocean, which lay within the Southern Hemisphere. Closure of the Iapetus Ocean, completed by the end of the Silurian, resulted in the formation of the Scottish and Scandinavian Caledonides, and associated Siluro-Devonian granite intrusions. Gondwana-derived Avalonia (Nova Scotia–England) drifted northwards across the Equator more rapidly than Laurentia–Baltica did. Closure of the more southerly Rheic Ocean began in the Viséan, eventually forming the Hercynian–Variscan Fold Belt across Appalachia and central Europe. The northward drift had a strong climatic influence on the sediment types deposited from the Devonian to the end-Permian. Reactivated structural relief inherited from the Caledonian orogeny controlled Early Carboniferous sedimentation. The Carboniferous sequence was deformed and truncated prior to deposition of the Late Permian Rotliegend reservoir rocks. Equatorial Carboniferous coals are probably the source all the gas found in the overlying Rotliegend desert sandstones of the Southern Permian Basin. The latest Permian Zechstein Sea transgressed the area via a young Viking–Central graben system. Post-Permian subsidence carried Coal Measures to depths and temperatures at which methane was generated. Gas in Late Westphalian–Stephanian red sandstones is capped by Rotliegend claystones and salts, and in Rotliegend reservoirs by Zechstein salt, which forms an almost perfect top seal.


[[Carboniferous miospore biostratigraphy of the North Sea|Carboniferous miospore biostratigraphy of the North Sea by D. McLean, B. Owens, R. Neves]]
Carboniferous coals provided much of the energy that drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coals and associated carbonaceous shales are the source of major volumes of methane, especially in The Netherlands and beneath the Southern North Sea, which have been exploited only since the 1960s. These coal-bearing beds are distributed in an apparently simple west–east zone that, prior to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, extended from the Appalachian Mountains of North America (e.g. Ziegler 1987, 1990, Calder 1998, Scott 1998), across South Wales (where many coals have been converted to anthracite), central England, the Midland Valley of Scotland, and beneath especially the Southern North Sea, The Netherlands, northern Germany and Poland to Russia. In detail, the depositional and structural history of the belt is relatively complex.


[[Post-Carboniferous burial and exhumation histories of Carboniferous rocks of the southern North Sea and adjacent onshore UK|Post-Carboniferous burial and exhumation histories of Carboniferous rocks of the southern North Sea and adjacent onshore UK by Paul F. Green]]
The Carboniferous rocks of the British Isles are underlain by older Palaeozoic marine sedimentary rocks, similar to those of the Welsh highlands and the Lake District and, locally, by Devonian sequences (mostly terrestrial). These rocks are the product of deposition in and around the Iapetus Ocean, and their deposition was associated with the relative movement of crustal plates that led, in the Late Silurian and Devonian, to the Caledonian orogeny and a more or less unified British Isles.
 
[[Dinantian and Namurian depositional systems in the southern North Sea|Dinantian and Namurian depositional systems in the southern North Sea by John D. Collinson]]
 
[[Fluvial sandbody architecture, cyclicity and sequence stratigraphic setting – implications for hydrocarbon reservoirs: the Westphalian C and D of the Osnabrück–Ibbenbüren area, northwest Germany|Fluvial sandbody architecture, cyclicity and sequence stratigraphic setting – implications for hydrocarbon reservoirs: the Westphalian C and D of the Osnabrück–Ibbenbüren area, northwest Germany by Neil S. Jones & Brian W. Glover]]
 
[[A sequence-stratigraphy scheme of the Late Carboniferous, southern North Sea, Anglo-Dutch sector|A sequence-stratigraphy scheme of the Late Carboniferous, southern North Sea, Anglo-Dutch sector by J. M. Cole, M. Whitaker, M. Kirk, S. Crittenden]]
 
[[Westphalian mid-A to mid-C depositional controls, UK Pennine Basin: regional analyses and their relevance to southern North Sea interpretations|Westphalian mid-A to mid-C depositional controls, UK Pennine Basin: regional analyses and their relevance to southern North Sea interpretations by J. H. Rippon]]
 
[[Imaging coals with seismic reflection data for improved detection of sandstone bodies|Imaging coals with seismic reflection data for improved detection of sandstone bodies by B. A. McGlen & J. H. Rippon]]
 
[[Interplay between northern and southern sediment sources during Westphalian deposition in the Silverpit Basin, southern North Sea|Interplay between northern and southern sediment sources during Westphalian deposition in the Silverpit Basin, southern North Sea by Andrew Morton, Claire Hallsworth, Andrea Moscariello]]
 
[[Chemostratigraphy of the Upper Carboniferous Schooner Formation, southern North Sea|Chemostratigraphy of the Upper Carboniferous Schooner Formation, southern North Sea by T. J. Pearce, D. Wray, K. Ratcliffe, D. K. Wright, A. Moscariello]]
 
[[Stratigraphy of the Upper Carboniferous Schooner Formation, southern North Sea: chemostratigraphy, mineralogy, palynology and Sm–Nd isotope analysis|Stratigraphy of the Upper Carboniferous Schooner Formation, southern North Sea: chemostratigraphy, mineralogy, palynology and Sm–Nd isotope analysis by T. J. Pearce, D. McLean, D. Wray, D. K. Wright, C. J. Jeans, E. W. Mearns]]
 
[[Geological factors influencing gas production in the Tyne field (Block 44/18a), southern North Sea, and their impact on future infill well planning|Geological factors influencing gas production in the Tyne field (Block 44/18a), southern North Sea, and their impact on future infill well planning by Colin M. Jones, Philip. J. Allen, Neville H. Morrison]]
 
[[Can new technologies be used to exploit the coal resources in the Yorkshire–Nottinghamshire Coalfield?|Can new technologies be used to exploit the coal resources in the Yorkshire–Nottinghamshire Coalfield? by S. Holloway, N. S. Jones, D. P. Creedy, K. Garner]]
 
[[Remaining hydrocarbon exploration potential of the Carboniferous fairway, UK southern North Sea|Remaining hydrocarbon exploration potential of the Carboniferous fairway, UK southern North Sea by Don Cameron, Jim Munns, Sue Stoker]]
 
[[Late Carboniferous redbeds of the UK southern North Sea, viewed in a regional context|Appendix: Late Carboniferous redbeds of the UK southern North Sea, viewed in a regional context by Bernard Besly]]
 
== Preface ==
This volume is the proceedings of a conference organized by the Yorkshire Geological Society and held at Stephenson Hall, University of Sheffield on 13 and 14 September 2002. A further day of field trips was held on 15 September. The conference aimed to bring together geoscientists experienced in the Carboniferous of the southern North Sea and also those whose experience has been mainly derived from the study of the Carboniferous on shore, either at outcrop or in the subsurface. These two areas are mostly parts of the same set of basinal and depositional systems, and it was thought that a forum for transfer of knowledge and experience between the two communities would be widely beneficial and stimulating. The Yorkshire Geological Society, whose members probably represent the greatest accumulation of onshore Carboniferous experience in the UK, was thought to be an especially relevant organization to run such an event. The timing was also thought to be particularly appropriate, as the exploration for gas in the southern North Sea moves into a phase where most of (if not all) the major accumulations in the Rotliegendes reservoir have already been found and mostly exploited and where future exploration must increasingly focus on the deeper and more complex Carboniferous reservoir sections.
 
Some 120 participants attended the conference, mainly from the UK and The Netherlands, but also from Germany and Australia. Participants came from the petroleum industry, from geological surveys and other government institutes, and from academia. The facilities at Sheffield, with almost all participants resident on site, provided an ideal setting for both the formal sessions of the conference and also for much informal discussion. Twenty-eight talks were presented at the meeting, along with posters and a fascinating core-and-log display by Tony Hodge and colleagues at Roc Oil, giving an insight into the concealed Carboniferous of the East Midlands oil province. The topics ranged widely in their stratigraphical and geographical coverage, and across a range of subdisciplines. Although few contributions explicitly compared offshore with onshore, that theme was implicit in much of the conference discussion and was particularly apparent during the field trips, when the relevance of outcrops to particular offshore situations was widely discussed.
 
This proceedings volume reflects quite well the overall scope of the conference, although obviously it does not record all that was presented there. We hope that it will prove a useful resource for future work, both onshore and offshore, in the coming years.
 
As well as the full papers, the volume also includes the abstract of a talk given at the conference by Bernard Besly. The reasons for this slightly unusual presentation are that the stratigraphical nomenclature proposed in this abstract has, since the conference, become widely adopted in the industry and it is also widely cited in full papers within this volume. Its inclusion here will make it more widely accessible than if it remained confined to the abstract volume, which had only limited circulation. The abstract is published without full peer review. The absence of type sections for the proposed new formations will be rectified when the full account is eventually published, which it is hoped will be in a future volume of the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society.
 
The conference and this volume would not have been possible without the encouragement and financial support of the conference sponsors who are listed overleaf. All their contributions are warmly acknowledged. We would like to single out for particular thanks Andy Spencer of GDF Britain, whose initial encouragement and support led to the planning of the meeting. We would also like to thank Duncan McLean, Mike Romano and Gill Johnson of the University of Sheffield, who were responsible for most of the arrangements at Stephenson Hall. The editing of this volume has been made possible by the help that the editors have received from many referees.
 
== Sponsors ==
{| class="wikitable"
| Baker Hughes || GDF Britain
|-
| BP || NAM
|-
| Calenergy Gas || Shell
|-
| Conoco || Yorkshire Geological Society
|-
| ExxonMobil ||
|}
 
== Referees ==
 
The Editors are indebted to the following, whose time was given freely to report on the manuscripts published in this volume and without whose efforts this volume would have been impossible.
 
{| class="wikitable"
| J. F. Aitken || D. G. Jones
|-
| T. D. J. Cameron || S. Kelly
|-
| J. I. Chisholm  || R. W. O’B. Knox
|-
| A. J. Fraser  || L. Macchi
|-
| S. S. Flint || K. Maguire
|-
| M. C. Geluk || T. McKie
|-
| N. R. Goulty || A. E. Milodowski
|-
| P. D. Guion || D. Quirk
|-
| G. Hampson || M. H. Stephenson
|-
| R. F. P. Hardman || S. Stoker
|-
| C. Hartkopf-Froeder || K. Thomson
|-
| K. Higgs || S. Tubb
|-
| P. Japsen || C. N. Waters
|-
| C. Jones || H. Williams
|}

Revision as of 08:20, 27 July 2019

By K. W. Glennie Department of Geology & Petroleum Geology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 2UE

From: Pages 1–12 of Carboniferous hydrocarbon resources: the southern North Sea and surrounding onshore areas, edited by J. D. Collinson, D. J. Evans, D. W. Holliday, N. S. Jones. Published as volume 7 in the Occasional Publications series of the Yorkshire Geological Society, © Yorkshire Geological Society 2005.

Summary

The tectonic development of the Southern North Sea Basin during the Permo-Carboniferous was the outcome of geological events that began in the Early Palaeozoic when Scotland–Greenland and England–Baltica were on opposite sides of the Iapetus Ocean, which lay within the Southern Hemisphere. Closure of the Iapetus Ocean, completed by the end of the Silurian, resulted in the formation of the Scottish and Scandinavian Caledonides, and associated Siluro-Devonian granite intrusions. Gondwana-derived Avalonia (Nova Scotia–England) drifted northwards across the Equator more rapidly than Laurentia–Baltica did. Closure of the more southerly Rheic Ocean began in the Viséan, eventually forming the Hercynian–Variscan Fold Belt across Appalachia and central Europe. The northward drift had a strong climatic influence on the sediment types deposited from the Devonian to the end-Permian. Reactivated structural relief inherited from the Caledonian orogeny controlled Early Carboniferous sedimentation. The Carboniferous sequence was deformed and truncated prior to deposition of the Late Permian Rotliegend reservoir rocks. Equatorial Carboniferous coals are probably the source all the gas found in the overlying Rotliegend desert sandstones of the Southern Permian Basin. The latest Permian Zechstein Sea transgressed the area via a young Viking–Central graben system. Post-Permian subsidence carried Coal Measures to depths and temperatures at which methane was generated. Gas in Late Westphalian–Stephanian red sandstones is capped by Rotliegend claystones and salts, and in Rotliegend reservoirs by Zechstein salt, which forms an almost perfect top seal.

Carboniferous coals provided much of the energy that drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coals and associated carbonaceous shales are the source of major volumes of methane, especially in The Netherlands and beneath the Southern North Sea, which have been exploited only since the 1960s. These coal-bearing beds are distributed in an apparently simple west–east zone that, prior to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, extended from the Appalachian Mountains of North America (e.g. Ziegler 1987, 1990, Calder 1998, Scott 1998), across South Wales (where many coals have been converted to anthracite), central England, the Midland Valley of Scotland, and beneath especially the Southern North Sea, The Netherlands, northern Germany and Poland to Russia. In detail, the depositional and structural history of the belt is relatively complex.

The Carboniferous rocks of the British Isles are underlain by older Palaeozoic marine sedimentary rocks, similar to those of the Welsh highlands and the Lake District and, locally, by Devonian sequences (mostly terrestrial). These rocks are the product of deposition in and around the Iapetus Ocean, and their deposition was associated with the relative movement of crustal plates that led, in the Late Silurian and Devonian, to the Caledonian orogeny and a more or less unified British Isles.