The discovery patterns of the resources of the rift and gas provinces of the North Sea compared with some analogous provinces worldwide

Abstract

The discovered resources of the North Sea petroleum systems total around 100 billion barrels oil equivalent recoverable. Of these 70% occur in the Jurassic-sourced petroleum system of the Central and Northern North Sea (CNNS). The second major petroleum system occurs in the Southern North Sea (the Anglo-Dutch Basin, ADB), contains around 30% of the resources, is Carboniferous-sourced and gas-bearing. The discovery patterns of the resources in the two basins are here analysed by comparison with some analogous basins. The CNNS can be compared geologically with other oil-prone basins: Sirte, Bohai Wan, Gulf of Suez, Cambay/Bombay, Marib–Al Jawf and the southern part of the West Siberian basin. The ADB can be compared with gas-prone basins: Poland, Dnepr-Donets, Gippsland, Gulf of Thailand, NW Australia and northern West Siberia. The discovery patterns of the basins are compared with each other using: resource growth with respect to exploration wells; field size distributions; discovered volumes with respect to exploration wells; exploration efficiency. A simple ‘ranking’ based on these criteria suggests that the CNNS is of middle rank while the ADB is, surprisingly, almost ‘worst in class’.