Abstract
Abstract The oil seep in an intraformational conglomerate at Mupe Bay has attracted much interest as providing possible evidence of oil generation in the Wessex Basin by the early Cretaceous (Wealden). Previous organic geochemical studies investigating whether oils of different maturity exist in the clasts and matrix of the conglomerate have been complicated by the effects of heavy biodegradation of the oil. In this work, we present detailed molecular organic geochemical data from a significantly larger suite of samples than has been previously studied. These have been screened using a multivariate statistical approach to identify those samples which have been least influenced by biodegradation. Conventional molecular maturity parameters applied to the subset of samples which have suffered no detectable modification to their biological marker (hopane and sterane) distributions indicate that the oil in the clasts is of exactly the same maturity as that in the matrix. However, this observation does not preclude two phases of staining, although it remains to be proven that the clasts contained oil at the time of their deposition.
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