Controls on the Lower Cretaceous Punt Sandstone Member, a massive deep-water clastic deposystem, Inner Moray Firth, UK North Sea

Abstract

Interpretation of high-quality seismic data, constrained by exploration wells, provides insights into controls on the stratigraphic architecture and deep-water sedimentary processes that governed deposition of the Lower Cretaceous Punt Sandstone Member in the Inner Moray Firth Basin. We suggest a model of deposition in which sediment provenance from the north and west progressively filled depositional accommodation in proximal depocentres before spilling into more distal areas via linear, confined and incised channel complexes. As well as giving important clues into post-rift depositional processes in the basin, and a well-imaged ancient analogue for the deposition of massive deep-water sands, the seismic and stratigraphic data may also provide important insights into factors governing the poorly imaged Lower Cretaceous sands in neighbouring basins of the North Sea.