This text provides a snap-shot of current understanding on the petroleum geology of the East Irish Sea and adjacent areas.

This text provides a snap-shot of current understanding on the petroleum geology of the East Irish Sea and adjacent areas.

This text covers a wide range of exploration topics from the regional to the field scale. It provides new information on Neogene to recent stratigraphy and sedimentation in the North Atlantic. A significant amount of exploration has taken place since the publication of Geological Society special publication no. 93 in 1995.

The history of the European oil and gas industry reflects local as well as global political events, economic constraints and the personal endeavours of individual petroleum geoscientists as much as it does the development of technologies and the underlying geology of the region. The first commercial oil wells in Europe were drilled in Poland in 1853, Romania in 1857, Germany in 1859 and Italy in 1860. The 23 papers in this volume focus on the history and heritage of the oil and gas industry in the key European oil-producing countries from the earliest onshore drilling to its development into the modern industry that we know today. The contributors chronicle the main events and some of the major players that shaped the industry in Europe. The volume also marks several important anniversaries, including 150 years of oil exploration in Poland and Romania, the centenary of the drilling of the first oil well in the UK and 50 years of oil production from onshore Spain.

North Sea and onshore Netherlands and Germany, Paleozoic hydrocarbon plays across parts of NW Europe remain relatively under-explored both onshore and offshore. This volume brings together new and previously unpublished knowledge about the Paleozoic plays of NW Europe to describe significant additional exploration opportunities outside and below existing plays. The volume contains papers on Paleozoic plays in the North Sea, Irish Sea, onshore UK, France and Switzerland. They highlight how improvements in seismic data quality and the availability of previously unpublished well datasets form the basis for improved understanding of local to regional interpretations that move forward from generalized basin development models. The improved structural trap and source rock basin definition feeds to better constrained, locally variable burial, uplift, maturation and migration models. Particularly notable are the significant mapped extents and thickness of Paleozoic source, reservoir and seal rocks in areas previously dismissed as regional highs and platforms.

Petroleum Geology of Ireland provides a comprehensive review of the petroleum geology of Ireland and its very extensive continental shelf. The authors chart the fifty-year history of petroleum exploration in Ireland, from early drilling onshore to the present frontier exploration in the deep water Atlantic basins. The structural framework and regional geological setting of the sedimentary basins is described in two chapters, and this is followed by a review of the history of Irish onshore and offshore exploration, together with an outline of the licensing framework. The onshore basins, largely Carboniferous and older, are then considered as they guided the initial understanding of the younger offshore geological framework. Pre-Permian to Cenozoic stratigraphy of the region is explained in five chapters, each illustrated by palaeogeographic maps that are based both on onshore geology and on the results of offshore drilling. The major regional groups of basins are then considered and for each there is analysis of basin development and petroleum systems, together with a review of their exploration history, plays and prospects. The Celtic Sea basins, south of Ireland, contain a thick Mesozoic succession and host a number of producing petroleum fields and sub-commercial discoveries. The Atlantic margin basins, with thick successions of Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments, are the largest and least well explored of the Irish basin groups but offer a number of promising oil and gas discoveries and frontier prospects. Finally, the Northern Ireland and Irish Sea basins, onshore or in shallow waters, contain a thick Upper Palaeozoic to early Mesozoic succession which provides important insights into the regional geological evolution and also the challenges of trying to understand the petroleum habitat of Ireland. Future and potential petroleum prospects in the Irish offshore region are reviewed in the final chapter, which also examines briefly the gas storage potential of onshore and offshore reservoirs. The book, which contains comprehensive reference lists with each chapter, will be of value to oil industry geoscientists seeking to understanding Irish onshore and offshore geology and to academic researchers with an interest in marine and petroleum geology.

Geological Society Memoir 52 records the extraordinary 50+ year journey that has led to the development of some 458 oil and gas fields on the UKCS. It contains papers on almost 150 onshore and offshore fields in all of the UK’s main petroliferous basins. These papers range from look-backs on some of the first-developed gas fields in the Southern North Sea, to papers on fields that have only just been brought into production or may still remain undeveloped, and includes two candidate CO2 sequestration projects. These papers are intended to provide a consistent summary of the exploration, appraisal, development and production history of each field, leading to the current subsurface understanding which is described in greater detail. As such the Memoir will be an enduring reference source for those exploring for, developing, producing hydrocarbons and sequestering CO2 on the UKCS in the coming decades. It encapsulates the petroleum industry’s deep subsurface knowledge accrued over more than 50 years of exploration and production.