´óÏó´«Ã½

Project description
The Barents Sea is an economically and societally important sedimentary basin in the northern part of the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The area displays a complex tectonic-sedimentary evolution associated with Triassic rifting, high sediment supply in Mesozoic and deformation of a highly mobile salt layer, producing a suite of geometrically complex structures, such as salt diapirs and pillows. The growth of these salt structures controlled the depositional fairways and stratigraphy of Triassic-Eocene post-salt sediments through the formation of minibasins, rollovers and turtle-back structures in the basin. The kinematics, timing and style of salt deformation have however varied significantly through time and space in the basin, with two large sectors, the Nordkapp and the Tromsø Basin displaying significant but contrasting styles of salt tectonics.

Understanding the three-dimensional variability of these salt structures is crucial to constrain the evolution and tectonostratigraphic architecture of their associated minibasins and sediments fairways. This, in turn, is key to estimating the distribution and geometry of reservoirs for both hydrocarbons and CO2 storage, which leads to the following objectives for these projects:

• To integrate borehole data with 2D and 3D reflection seismic data interpretation (time-migrated) to map base-salt, top-salt and key post-salt tectono-stratigraphy intervals across key areas in the Barents Sea.
• To produce structure and thickness maps to constrain the 3D variability of salt-controlled depocentres (i.e., minibasins and rollovers) that will be used to understand salt deformation kinematics and its control on sediment depositional patterns.
• To characterize and contrast the different salt-related structural styles and timing of deformation across the study area to understand the various controls of salt tectonics in the area.

Salt and minibasin structures characteristic of the Barents Sea (from Hassan et al., 2021)

Photo:

Hassan et al., 2021)

Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS)
Suggested courses:
GEOV261 / Basin analysis and subsurface interpretation -10
GEOV251 / Advanced Structural Geology - 10
GEOV272 / Seismic Interpretation – 10
GEOV364 / Advanced basin analysis – 5
GEOV361 / Sequence Stratigraphy and Source-to-Sink - 10
GEOV302 / Data analysis in earth science – 10

Field-, lab- and analysis work
2D and 3D Seismic interpretation (use of the seismic lab)