A low-carbon future for the North Sea basin

2021 ◽  
pp. SP494-2020-236
Author(s):  
David G. Quirk ◽  
John R. Underhill ◽  
Jon G. Gluyas ◽  
Matthew J. Howe ◽  
Hamish A. M. Wilson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Industrial Emissions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The North ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Supplementary Material

AbstractHuman emissions of greenhouse gases have caused a predictable rise of 1.2°C in global temperatures. Over the last 70 years, the rise has occurred at a geologically unprecedented speed and scale. To avoid a worsening situation, most developed nations are turning to renewable sources of power to meet their climate commitments, including UK, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands. The North Sea basin offers many advantages in the transition from fossil fuels by virtue of its natural resources, physical setting, offshore infrastructure and skilled workforce. Nonetheless, the magnitude of the up-front costs and the areas required to achieve net zero emissions are rarely acknowledged. In addition, some of the technologies being planned are commercially immature. In particular, the current cost of capture, transport and disposal of carbon dioxide is problematic, if it is to be applied as a large-scale solution to industrial emissions. To repurpose the North Sea to meet a low-carbon future will require substantial collaboration between governments and industrial sectors. There are nonetheless significant opportunities for companies prepared to switch from the traditional oil and gas business.Supplementary material at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5684641

Carboniferous records of the Zoophycos group of trace fossils from England, Wales, the Isle of Man and the North Sea

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Duncan McLean ◽  
Matthew Booth ◽  
David J. Bodman ◽  
Finlay D. McLean
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Trace Fossils ◽  
Depositional Environments ◽  
Common Component ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Clastic Rocks ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Supplementary Material

The Zoophycos group of trace fossils is common in Carboniferous to recent marine strata and sediments, and is a common component of ichnofaunas in the Visean and Namurian stages of England and Wales. A review of new and published records indicates that it is often present in limestones and sandstones of Chadian to Arnsbergian age. Thereafter it is less common, and restricted to clastic rocks. There are no known records within Carboniferous strata above the lowest Westphalian. The form is most common and often abundant in limestones of the Yoredale facies in the upper Visean and lower Namurian stages of northern England, particularly so in northern Northumberland. Where detailed sedimentological data exist, they indicate that the organisms responsible for the Zoophycos group burrowed into unconsolidated carbonate substrate that was deposited under low accumulation rates, often affected by storm wave action and where seawater flow provided a nutrient supply. However, in mixed carbonate–clastic settings, the deep-tier nature of Zoophycos may indicate that the organism lived in overlying shallow-marine, clastic-dominated depositional environments and burrowed down into the carbonate substrate. The same may be true of siliciclastic depositional settings where the presence of Zoophycos in some sandstones may reflect the palaeoenvironment of the overlying, finer-grained transgressive marine (prodelta and distal mouth bar) deposits.Supplementary material: A spreadsheet with details of Carboniferous records of Zoophycos group fossils from England, Wales, the Isle of Man and the North Sea is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4994636

scholarly journals Supplementary material to "Large-scale forcing of the European Slope Current and associated inflows to the North Sea"

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Marsh ◽  
Ivan D. Haigh ◽  
Stuart A. Cunningham ◽  
Mark E. Inall ◽  
Marie Porter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Supplementary Material

scholarly journals Significant taxon sampling gaps in DNA databases limit the operational use of marine macrofauna metabarcoding

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Thomassen Hestetun ◽  
Einar Bye-Ingebrigtsen ◽  
R. Henrik Nilsson ◽  
Adrian G. Glover ◽  
Per-Otto Johansen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Species Level ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Species Identity ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Significant Effort

Abstract Significant effort is spent on monitoring of benthic ecosystems through government funding or indirectly as a cost of business, and metabarcoding of environmental DNA samples has been suggested as a possible complement or alternative to current morphological methods to assess biodiversity. In metabarcoding, a public sequence database is typically used to match barcodes to species identity, but these databases are naturally incomplete. The North Sea oil and gas industry conducts large-scale environmental monitoring programs in one of the most heavily sampled marine areas worldwide and could therefore be considered a “best-case scenario” for macrofaunal metabarcoding. As a test case, we investigated the database coverage of two common metabarcoding markers, mitochondrial COI and the ribosomal rRNA 18S gene, for a complete list of 1802 macrofauna taxa reported from the North Sea monitoring region IV. For COI, species level barcode coverage was 50.4% in GenBank and 42.4% for public sequences in BOLD. For 18S, species level coverage was 36.4% in GenBank and 27.1% in SILVA. To see whether rare species were underrepresented, we investigated the most commonly reported species as a separate dataset but found only minor coverage increases. We conclude that compared to global figures, barcode coverage is high for this area, but that a significant effort remains to fill barcode databases to levels that would make metabarcoding operational as a taxonomic tool, including for the most common macrofaunal taxa.

Cross-border petroleum geology in the North Sea: an introduction

2022 ◽  
pp. SP494-2021-182
Author(s):  
Stuart G. Archer ◽  
Henk Kombrink ◽  
Stefano Patruno ◽  
Domenico Chiarella ◽  
Christopher Jackson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Near Field ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Oil And Gas Exploration ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Data Continuity

AbstractThe North Sea has entered a phase of infrastructure-led exploration in an attempt to extend the economic lives of the main fields and arrest the overall production decline to a certain extent, while the transition to a future low-carbon use of the basin is also in progress. As the papers in this volume demonstrate, in order to find, appraise and develop the mostly smaller near-field opportunities as well as making sure to grasp the opportunities of the near-future energy transition, a regional understanding of the North Sea is still critical. Even more so, a cross-border approach is essential because 1) some of the plays currently being targeted have a clear cross-border element, 2) it allows the comparison of stratigraphic names throughout the entire basin and 3) it enables explorers to learn lessons from one part of the rift to be applied somewhere else.This volume offers an up-to-date, ‘geology-without-borders’ view of the stratigraphy, sedimentology, tectonics and oil-and-gas exploration trends of the entire North Sea basin. The challenges associated with data continuity and nomenclature differences across median lines are discussed and mitigated. Examples of under-exploited cross-border plays and discoveries are discussed.

Offshore Claims and Problems in the North Sea

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Young
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Geneva Convention ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
The North ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Economic Considerations

The possible presence of very large petroleum and natural gas reserves in the area beneath the North Sea is currently the subject of intense investigation. If confirmed, as seems likely in at least some localities, this occurrence will raise legal problems of considerable interest and complexity. For the North Sea is not merely an oilfield covered by water: for centuries it has been one of the world's major fishery regions and the avenue to and from the world's busiest seaports. Thus all three of the present principal uses of the sea—fishing, navigation, and the exploitation of submarine resources—promise to meet for the first time on a large scale in an area where all are of major importance. The process of reconciling the various interests at stake will provide the first thoroughgoing test of the adequacy and acceptability of the general principles laid down in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf and should add greatly to the practice and precedents available in this developing branch of the law. In the present article an attempt is made to review some of the geographical and economic considerations involved in the North Sea situation, to note some of the technical and legal developments that have already taken place, and to consider these elements in the light of the various interests and legal principles concerned.

scholarly journals Inferring the location and scale of mixing between habitat areas of lesser sandeel through information from the fishery

2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Jensen ◽  
Anna Rindorf ◽  
Peter J. Wright ◽  
Henrik Mosegaard
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Pelagic Fish ◽  
Fishing Ground ◽  
Marine Science ◽  
Foraging Habitat ◽  
Small Pelagic Fish ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea

Abstract Jensen, H., Rindorf, A., Wright, P. J., and Mosegaard, H. 2011. Inferring the location and scale of mixing between habitat areas of lesser sandeel through information from the fishery. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 43–51. Sandeels are small pelagic fish that play an important role in the diet of a range of natural predators. Because of their limited capture by traditional survey gear, little is known about their large-scale distribution or the degree of mixing between habitat areas. Detailed information collected directly from the fishery was used to map fishing grounds, which were then assumed to reflect the foraging habitat of the species. Length distributions from individual hauls were used to assess differences in the distributions as a function of distance between samples. Sandeel foraging habitat covered some 5% of the total area of the North Sea. Mixing between neighbouring fishing grounds was too low to eliminate differences in length distributions at distances between grounds down to 5 km. Within fishing grounds, mixing was sufficient to eliminate differences in length distributions at scales <28 km but insufficient at greater distances. The lack of mixing between grounds may result in large differences in sandeel abundance among adjacent fishing grounds. Further, notable abundance at one end of an extensive fishing ground is not necessarily indicative of similar abundance at its other end.

Large-scale assessment of masking potential by underwater ship noise the North Sea

2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (4) ◽  
pp. A80-A81
Author(s):  
Jakob Tougaard ◽  
Thomas Folegot ◽  
Christ de Jong ◽  
Emily T. Griffiths ◽  
Alexander M. von Benda-Beckmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Large Scale Assessment ◽  
The North ◽  
Scale Assessment ◽  
The North Sea

Study of sand wave migration over five years as observed in two windfarm development areas, and the implications for building on moving substrates in the North Sea

2014 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken P. Games ◽  
David I. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Sand Wave ◽  
Sand Waves ◽  
Migration Rates ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Wave Migration ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTSand waves are well known indicators of a mobile seabed. What do we expect of these features in terms of migration rates and seabed scour? We discuss these effects on seabed structures, both for the Oil and Gas and the Windfarm Industries, and consider how these impact on turbines and buried cables. Two case studies are presented. The first concerns a windfarm with a five-year gap between the planning survey and a subsequent cable route and environmental assessment survey. This revealed large-scale movements of sand waves, with the displacement of an isolated feature of 155 m in five years. Secondly, another windfarm development involved a re-survey, again over a five-year period, but after the turbines had been installed. This showed movements of sand waves of ∼50 m in five years. Observations of the scour effects on the turbines are discussed. Both sites revealed the presence of barchans. Whilst these have been extensively studied on land, there are few examples of how they behave in the marine environment. The two case studies presented show that mass transport is potentially much greater than expected and that this has implications for choosing turbine locations, the effect of scour, and the impact these sediment movements are likely to have on power cables.

scholarly journals Day-ahead Market Modelling of Large-scale Highly-renewable Multi-energy Systems: Analysis of the North Sea Region Towards 2050

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Gea Bermúdez ◽  
Kaushik Das ◽  
Hardi Koduvere ◽  
Matti Juhani Koivisto
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Unit Commitment ◽  
District Heating ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Computational Time ◽  
Integer Variables ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea

This paper proposes a mathematical model to simulate Day-ahead markets of large-scale multi-energy systems with high share of renewable energy. Furthermore, it analyses the importance of including unit commitment when performing such analysis. The results of the case study, which is performed for the North Sea region, show the influence of massive renewable penetration in the energy sector and increasing electrification of the district heating sector towards 2050, and how this impacts the role of other energy sources such as thermal and hydro. The penetration of wind and solar is likely to challenge the need for balancing in the system as well as the profitability of thermal units. The degree of influence of the unit commitment approach is found to be dependent on the configuration of the energy system. Overall, including unit commitment constraints with integer variables leads to more realistic behaviour of the units, at the cost of increasing considerably the computational time. Relaxing integer variables reduces significantly the computational time, without highly compromising the accuracy of the results. The proposed model, together with the insights from the study case, can be specially useful for system operators for optimal operational planning.

Large-scale siliciclastic input during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in the North Sea Basin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simin Jin ◽  
David Kemp ◽  
David Jolley ◽  
Manuel Vieira ◽  
Chunju Huang
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Isotope ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
Sediment Supply ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
The North ◽  
Thermal Maximum ◽  
The North Sea

&lt;p&gt;The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ~56 Ma) was the most marked climate warming event of the Cenozoic, and a potentially useful deep time analogue for understanding environmental responses to anthropogenic carbon emissions and associated warming. The response of sedimentary systems to the large-scale climate changes of the PETM are, however, still uncertain. Here, we present an extremely thick (~140 m) record of the PETM in cores from a well in the North Sea, offshore UK. In this well, a thick Paleocene-Eocene interval is developed owing to uplift of the East Shetland Platform in the late Paleocene. Carbon isotope data through this well, coupled with detailed sedimentological analysis, show that the PETM interval is contemporaneous with &gt;200 sandstone turbidites layers. Mud deposition without turbidites dominated sedimentation below and above the PETM. These observations support previous work from other localities highlighting how climate warming during the PETM likely drove substantial changes in hydrological cycling, erosion and sediment supply. Spectral analysis of turbidite recurrence in the PETM interval suggests that the abundance of turbidites was modulated in part by ~21 kyr astronomical precession climate cycles, further emphasizing a potential climatic control on turbidite sedimentation. In detail, we note a kiloyear-scale time lag between onset of the PETM carbon isotope excursion and the appearance of turbidites in the succession, highlighting a delay between PETM carbon release and warming and the basin-wide response in sediment supply.&lt;/p&gt;

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document