The North Sea is part of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Europe. It is located between Norway and Denmark in the east, Scotland and England in the west, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the south.
The geology of the North Sea describes the geological features such as channels, trenches, and ridges today and the geological history, plate tectonics, geological events that created them.
A geological basin is a large low-lying area or depression. It is often below sea level. Depressions are typically formed by tectonic processes acting on the lithosphere, providing "accommodation space" for sediment to be preserved. Basins are formed in a variety of tectonic settings: extensional, compressional, strike-slip and intraplate.
Geological basins are one of the most common places which collect sediment. The type of rocks which form there tell about the palaeoclimate of the continent. The geology is of interest to oil prospectors, hydrologists and palaeontologists. Exploration in the North Sea was initiated in May 1964 when the first well was spudded and the area has now become one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world.[1] Total recoverable reserves found to date, including adjacent land areas, amount to over 100 billion barrels of oil and natural gas.[2]
Geologically speaking, the North Sea is divided into four main basins: Northern, Moray Firth, Central, and Southern. Each has a long and complex geologic history with unique structural and stratigraphic developments driven by tectonic events over the last 400 Million years.[1] The northern North Sea Paleorift system, including the Viking and Sogn graben, is an approximately 150–200 km wide zone of extended upper crust with preserved strata from pre-Triassic to Tertiary. It is bounded by the Shetland Platform to the west and the Norwegian mainland to the east.[3]
^ abGlennie, K.W. (1998). Petroleum Geology of the North Sea, Basic concepts and recent advances (Fourth ed.). Blackwell Science Ltd.
^Spencer, A.M., Leckie, G.G. and Chew, K.J. (1996) North Sea hydrocarbon plays and their resources. In: Glennie, K. and Hurst, A. (eds) Northwest Europe's Hydrocarbon Industry. Geological Society, London, pp. 25-41.
^Nottvedt, A.; Gabrielsen, R.H.; Steel, R.J. (1995). "Tectonostratigraphy and sedimentary architecture of rift basins, with reference to the northern North Sea". Marine and Petroleum Geology. 12 (8): 881–901. doi:10.1016/0264-8172(95)98853-w.
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