Abstract
Abstract The Southern North Sea Basin area, stretching from the UK to the Netherlands, has a rich hydrocarbon exploration and production history. The past, present and expected future hydrocarbon and geothermal exploration trends in this area are discussed for eight key lithostratigraphic intervals, ranging from the Lower Carboniferous to Cenozoic. In the period between 2007 and 2017, a total of 95 new hydrocarbon fields were discovered, particularly in Upper Carboniferous, Rotliegend and Triassic reservoirs. Nineteen geothermal systems were discovered in the Netherlands onshore, mainly targeting aquifers in the Rotliegend and Upper Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous formations. Although the Southern North Sea Basin area is mature in terms of hydrocarbon exploration, it is shown that with existing and new geological insights, additional energy resources are still being proven in new plays such as the basal Upper Rotliegend (Ruby discovery) for natural gas and a new Chalk play for oil. It is predicted that hydrocarbon exploration in the Southern North Sea Basin area will probably experience a slight growth in the coming decade before slowing down, as the energy transition further matures. Geothermal exploration is expected to continue growing in the Netherlands onshore as well as gain more momentum in the UK.
Highlights
Since the publication of the Petroleum Geological Atlas of the Southern Permian Basin (SPB) (Doornenbal & Stevenson 2010), which gave a comprehensive overview based on more than 150 years of petroleum exploration and research from onshore UK to Poland, the basin has continued to see successful exploration wells drilled together with a diversification of drilling targets
In the UK sector, the NW trend of both Mississippian basin-bounding extensional faults (Leeder & Hardman 1990; Arsenikos et al 2018) and Variscan inversion structures, is attributed to the extensional and compressional reactivation of major Caledonide lineaments (Corfield et al 1996; Cameron et al 2005). The latter include the NW-trending Dowsing–South Hewett Fault Zone and the Elbe Lineament (Fig. 1), which were probably initiated during closure of the Tornquist Sea (Cocks & Fortey 1982; Pharaoh et al 2010, 2011, 2018; Smit et al 2018) in Late Ordovician time. Further reactivation of these structures occurred in Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic times (Badley et al 1989; Green et al 2018)
The development in energy resources of the Southern North Sea Basin (SNSB) area is discussed including past, recent (2007–17) and future developments
Summary
Since the publication of the Petroleum Geological Atlas of the Southern Permian Basin (SPB) (Doornenbal & Stevenson 2010), which gave a comprehensive overview based on more than 150 years of petroleum exploration and research from onshore UK to Poland, the basin has continued to see successful exploration wells drilled together with a diversification of drilling targets. For both the UK and Dutch offshore areas, it was only after the majority of the Rotliegend gas fields were found that exploration of the Upper Carboniferous started again in the 1980s.
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