Hydrocarbon Exploration and Biostratigraphy: The Application of Sea-level Studies

1987 ◽  
pp. 531-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. N. Devoy
2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Nick Hoffman ◽  
Natt Arian

Carbon dioxide geosequestration requires a detailed understanding of the whole sedimentary section, with particular emphasis on topseals and intraformational seals. Hydrocarbon exploration is more focused on reservoirs but requires a similar basin understanding. This extended abstract reviews the knowledge gained from petroleum exploration in the Gippsland Basin to The CarbonNet Project’s exploration program for CO2 storage. The Ninety Mile Beach on the Gippsland coast is a prominent modern-day sand fairway where longshore drift transports sediments north-eastwards along a barrier-bar system, trapping lake systems behind the coastal strip. This beach is only 10,000 years old (dating to the last glacial rise of sea level) but is built on a platform of earlier beaches that can be traced back almost 90 million years to the initiation of Latrobe Group deposition in the Gippsland Basin. Using a recently compiled and open-file volume of merged 3D seismic surveys, the authors show the evolution of the Latrobe shoreline can be mapped continuously from the Upper Cretaceous to the present day. Sand fairways accumulate as a barrier-bar system at the edge of a steadily subsiding marine embayment, with distinct retrogradational geometries. Behind the barrier system, a series of trapped lakes and lagoons are mapped. In these, coal swamps, extensive shales, and tidal sediments were deposited at different stages of the sea-level curve, while fluvial systems prograded through these lowlands. Detailed 3D seismic extractions show the geometry, orientation and extent of coals, sealing shales, fluvial channels, and bayhead deltas. Detailed understanding of these reservoir and seal systems outlines multi-storey play fairways for hydrocarbon exploration and geosequestration. Use of modern basin resource needs careful coordination of activity and benefits greatly from established data-sharing practices.


1992 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 147-147
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Jacobson ◽  
Rosemary A. Askin

Both insoluble (particulate) and soluble (molecular) sedimentary organic matter carry signatures of physical, chemical, and biological processes. These signatures may reflect (a) primary age-diagnostic, organism-specific, and environmentally-sensitive processes; (b) secondary factors related to mode of transportation, deposition, and preservation; and (c) tertiary agents that indicate post-burial alteration of the organic matter. Application of any or all organic matter data recorded in rocks can be used to solve geologic problems.Organic stratigraphy may be applied to hydrocarbon exploration. Our example uses both particulate and molecular data to reconstruct the age relations of Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary sediments in Wyoming, to determine the age of thrust fault motion, and to demonstrate constraints on the timing of upward petroleum migration to available trapped reservoirs.Another perspective helps establish chronostratigraphic frameworks for correlations of global sea-level change. Our example from Antarctic sediments that span the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary reflects perturbations in relative sea-level and the consequential changes in the distribution of organic particulates from marine and terrestrial regimes. These data can be compared to age-equivalent data from other parts of the world, and test global sea-level change.Both of these applications demonstrate the versatility of organic matter in solving geologic problems. Data from contemporaneous land plants, freshwater and marine organic-walled micro-organisms provide clues on their lifestyle and subsequent afterlife alteration. Organic stratigraphy represents a long anticipated integration of several paleontological disciplines. It combines aspects of palynology, organic geochemistry, paleobotany, and coal petrography into a coherent science, with an enhanced capability to provide significant applications in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 132 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 1217-1234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Sweet ◽  
Gwladys T. Gaillot ◽  
Gwenael Jouet ◽  
Tammy M. Rittenour ◽  
Samuel Toucanne ◽  
...  

Abstract How and when sediment moves from shallow marine to deep-water environments is an important and poorly understood control on basin-scale sediment dispersal patterns, the evolution of continental margins, and hydrocarbon exploration in deep-water basins. The Golo River (Eastern Corsica, France), its delta, canyons, and fans provide a unique opportunity to study sediment routing from source to sink in a relatively compact depositional system. We studied this system using an array of high-frequency seismic data, multi-beam bathymetry, and five cores for lithology and age control. Movement of sediment to deep water was controlled by interactions between the Golo River, the Golo Delta, and shelf-penetrating submarine canyons. Sediment moved to deep water when lobes of the Golo Delta prograded to the heads of these canyons, or when the Golo River itself flowed directly into one of them. Sand accumulated in canyons, deep-water channels, and submarine fans during glacial periods of low sea level, while mud was deposited throughout the slope, in the relatively short reach of leveed-confined channels, and in the mud-rich fringes around the sandy fans. During interglacial periods of high sea level, the basin was blanketed by mud-rich deposits up to 10 m thick interbedded with distinctive carbonate-rich sediments. Deposition rates in the basin ranged from 0.07 m/ka to 0.59 m/ka over the last 450 ka. Mud deposition rates remained relatively constant at ∼0.16 m/ka during all time periods, while sand deposition only happened during glacial periods of low sea level with an average rate of 0.24 m/ka. In addition to sea-level controls on sediment delivery, avulsions of the Golo River and its deltaic lobes preferentially routed sediment down either the North or South Golo canyons. Thus, while the larger, sequence-scale architecture of the basin is controlled by allogenic sea level forcing, millennial-scale autogenic processes operating on the shelf and in deep water shaped the distribution of sand and mud, and the internal geometry of the deltas and submarine fans that they fed. While some aspects of the Golo system are characteristic of steep, tectonically active margins, others such as the nature of connections between rivers and shelf-penetrating submarine canyons are observed in most margins with active submarine fans regardless of their tectonic setting.


1975 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 395-407
Author(s):  
S. Henriksen

The first question to be answered, in seeking coordinate systems for geodynamics, is: what is geodynamics? The answer is, of course, that geodynamics is that part of geophysics which is concerned with movements of the Earth, as opposed to geostatics which is the physics of the stationary Earth. But as far as we know, there is no stationary Earth – epur sic monere. So geodynamics is actually coextensive with geophysics, and coordinate systems suitable for the one should be suitable for the other. At the present time, there are not many coordinate systems, if any, that can be identified with a static Earth. Certainly the only coordinate of aeronomic (atmospheric) interest is the height, and this is usually either as geodynamic height or as pressure. In oceanology, the most important coordinate is depth, and this, like heights in the atmosphere, is expressed as metric depth from mean sea level, as geodynamic depth, or as pressure. Only for the earth do we find “static” systems in use, ana even here there is real question as to whether the systems are dynamic or static. So it would seem that our answer to the question, of what kind, of coordinate systems are we seeking, must be that we are looking for the same systems as are used in geophysics, and these systems are dynamic in nature already – that is, their definition involvestime.


Boreas ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Per Sandgren, Ian Snowball

Eos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Wheeling

Researchers identify the main sources of uncertainty in projections of global glacier mass change, which is expected to add about 8–16 centimeters to sea level, through this century.


10.1029/ft354 ◽  
1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Dennison ◽  
Edwin J. Anderson ◽  
Jack D. Beuthin ◽  
Edward Cotter ◽  
Richard J. Diecchio ◽  
...  

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