Staithes, Yorkshire: Reservoir geometries and seal/cap rock understanding
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Project description
The Staithes Sandstone Formation, well exposed around Staithes in N Yorkshire, is interpreted as broadly open marine shelfal sand deposits. The Staithes Sst Fm is uppermost Lower Pliensbachian in age and displays a thickness of ca 30m where it is best exposed. This interval is overlain by the Upper Pliensbachian Cleveland Ironstone Formation (ca 30m thick) and subsequently by the Toarcian-aged Whitby Mudstone Formation (ca 100m thick).
While the Yorkshire coast around Scarborough and Whitby has been extensively worked on over a very long time by both academia and industry, the Staithes Sst Fm is relatively understudied. The Cleveland Ironstone and the Whitby Mudstone Fms have both been studied in connection with their mineable constituents however, studies looking at the relationship and characterisation of the sandy Staithes with the fine-grained overlying strata are less well documented. This relationship is analogous to subsurface intervals that are being evaluated for both hydrocarbon reservoir and seal potential as well as carbon capture sites (storage and containment intervals).This MSc project would aim to work on published outcrop data, including virtual outcrop data, any publicly available deep borehole data, and potentially supplemented by own-collected outcrop data in order to define, describe and quantify the characteristics and dimensional relationships of the various scales of stratigraphic cycles and architectural elements making up the Staithes Sst Fm package and the sealing potential of the overlying formations.
The student will mainly work with data from outcrops on the north side of the harbour at Staithes in addition to data from Robin Hood Bay, when available. This project will fit well with a currently ongoing project at UiB studying the effect of chlorite coating on reservoir quality in similar deposits.
Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS)
GEOV272 (10p), GEOV361 (10p), GEOV251 (10p), GEOV261 (10p), GEOV352 (5), GEOV360 (10p), GEOV302 (5p)
Prerequisites
The student must be interested in working and collaborating with others and will spend some of the time at Equinor's premises at Sandsli in Bergen.
Field-, lab- and analysis work
The student will primarily use drone data that has previously been collected from exposures in England. These will be checked against actual exposure data by traveling to the field in England. The project may also include well and/or seismic data from the North Sea.
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NB: This project is not yet approved by the research group or program board
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