Devon & Dorset
ENVS364-564-600 Applied Basin Analysis
This six day field class runs at Easter in your third or fourth year depending on the degree programme that you chose. The field class is designed to allow you to put into practice everything that you have learned during your preceding field training, in the context of the oil-rich Wessex Basin. The aim of the field class is to give you experience of synthesising information that you collect from basement Palaeozoic rocks (370 million years old) in Devon in the west of the basin, through to the much younger Cenozoic (55 million years) sedimentary rocks in Dorset in the east of the basin.
The field class follows a number of focussed workshops giving you the skills needed to make sense of the evolution of the Wessex Basin and the timing and location of oil generation, and then migration of oil into reservoirs, subsurface trap formation and, in some cases, natural leakage of oil to the surface.
The field class is carefully structured to allow you to see the entire sedimentary sequence that fills the Wessex Basin. The work starts with Devonian metamorphic basement and overlying Lower Permian alluvial fan deposits near Torquay in the west. The following field sites take you through the stratigraphic succession visiting the Upper Permian, Lower and Upper Triassic, Lower, Middle and Upper Jurassic, Lower and Upper Cretaceous and Eocene sedimentary rocks. Over the six days, you will visit sites including: Dawlish, BudleighSalterton, Ladram Bay, Beer, Lyme Regis, Bridport, Portland Bill, Osmington, Poxwell, Durdle Door, Lulworth, Kimmeridge Bay, Swanage and Studland. Some of these sites are astoundingly scenic and have been made world famous by the renowned Jurassic Coast tourist trail.
On this field course you will visit and study organic rich shales that are the source of oil and gas in the deep sub-surface. You will visit natural oil seeps that prove that oil migration has happened. You will visit outcrops of a number of porous and permeable reservoir rocks that store oil in the subsurface. You will visit outcrops of the low permeability caprocks that hold oil in reservoirs and you will observe and study faults and folds that together create inverted trapping structures that hold the oil in place.
Accommodation is self-catering in caravans close to Charmouth in the centre of the Wessex Basin.
ENVS600 Introduction to Petroleum Geoscience
This six day field class runs at Easter. The field class is designed to give you field training, in the context of the oil-rich Wessex Basin. The aim of the field class is to give you experience of synthesising information that you collect from basement Palaeozoic rocks (370 million years old) in Devon in the west of the basin, through to the much younger Cenozoic (55 million years) sedimentary rocks in Dorset in the east of the basin.
The field class follows a number of focussed workshops giving you the skills needed to make sense of the evolution of the Wessex Basin and the timing and location of oil generation and then oil migration into reservoirs. The workshops and preceding classes also include basic field training , how to collect data in notebooks in the field and outcrop logging.
The field class is carefully structured to allow you to see the entire sedimentary sequence that fills the Wessex Basin. The work starts with basal Lower Permian alluvial fan deposits near Torquay in the west. The following field sites take you through the stratigraphic succession visiting the Upper Permian, Lower and Upper Triassic, Lower, Middle and Upper Jurassic, Lower and Upper Cretaceous and Eocene sedimentary rocks. Over the six days, you will visit sites including: Dawlish, BudleighSalterton, Ladram Bay, Beer, Lyme Regis, Bridport, Portland Bill, Osmington, Poxwell, Durdle Door, Lulworth, Kimmeridge Bay, Swanage and Studland. Some of these sites are astoundingly scenic and have been made world famous by the renowned Jurassic Coast tourist trail.
On this field course you will visit and study representative source rocks, caprocks, and trapping structures. Most importantly, you will visit outcrops of a large number of porous and permeable reservoir rocks. These include the oil-bearing: Lower Triassic Sherwood sandstones, Lower Jurassic Bridport sandstones and Middle Jurassic Forest Marble. Other potential reservoir rocks you will visit include the Upper Jurassic Portland succession, the Upper Cretaceous Chalk and Upper Permian Rotliegend sandstones (both gas bearing in the Southern North Sea).
ENVS607 Petroleum Reservoir Analogue Field Course
This two week roving field class runs immediately after the second semester exams, in early June. The field class is designed to allow you to see at outcrop most of the reservoir rocks that store and produce oil and gas in the North Sea and neighbouring sedimentary basins. The aim of the field class is to give you direct experience of a wide range of reservoir rock types at outcrop. Your field observations will be supplemented by supporting data from subsurface reservoirs in the same rock types and ages. The supporting data will include seismic images through the reservoir, wireline, core analysis and petrographic data.
You will visit outcrops of Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous reservoir rocks. You will log, map and study fluvial, aeolian, estuarine, and marine sandstones and a range of marine limestones. All the field sites are coastal and you will experience not only an amazing array of reservoir rock types but areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Field sites include Brora and Helmsdale in Sutherland as well as Lossiemouthand Hopeman in Moray (all in NE Scotland). You will also visit Pease Bay and Howick in the SE Scotland-Northumberland Border Region. You will work on several coastal outcrops around Scarborough before visiting Filey and Flamborough, all of which are in Yorkshire
Accommodation is mostly self-catering in apartment rooms in Brora, Eyemouth and Scarborough with two of the fourteen nights spent in a small hotel in Lossiemouth in NE Scotland. Given the tide-dependency of the coastal outcrops, there should be time to allow you to visit one or two famous landmarks such as John O’Groats (the furthest north part of mainland UK), and the Rotunda in Scarborough, a Geology museum opened in 1829 at the suggestion of the father of English geology: William Smith.