'Phantom volcanoes' may hide more oil and gas in the North Sea - study

Innkommet 19.02.2019 13:31
By Lefteris Karagiannopoulos
OSLO, Feb 19 (Reuters) - An unexplored 7,000 square
kilometre (2,700 square mile) swathe of the British North Sea,
previously thought to contain empty chambers left by three
extinct volcanoes, may hide oil and gas instead, the University
of Aberdeen said on Tuesday.
For decades it was assumed that the Rattray volcanic
province off northwest Scotland contained old magma chambers,
ruling out the possibility of oil and gas discoveries.
However, the university's geologists now say these "phantom
volcanoes" never existed at all.
The study's findings raise the prospect of future
discoveries in the area, which has been left untouched over 50
years of exploration activity in the North Sea, said the
university.
"What we found has completely overturned decades of accepted
knowledge," Aberdeen University's Dr Nick Schofield said in a
statement. "This gives us back a huge amount of gross rock
volume that we never knew existed, in one of the world’s most
prolific regions for oil and gas production."
Schofield said the team of geologists, including two
colleagues from Heriot-Watt University and the University of
Adelaide, had reassessed the area by combining 3D seismic data
from Norway's Petroleum Geo-Services with well data.
"There is a huge area under there that hasn’t been looked at
in detail for a long time, because of the previously incorrect
geological model," Schofield said.
Exploration in the area may be challenging, said the
geologists, but technology is improving and there are still big
discoveries being made in the North Sea, such as the ones in the
Central Graben and Viking Graben areas.
"As the old saying goes, often the best places to look for
oil are in places near to where you've already found it," said
Schofield. "The North Sea is a prime example of that."
The volcanoes were thought to have been formed millions of
years ago, during seismic activity under the North Sea that
almost created an ocean between Britain and Europe - an episode
geologists have described as a failed "Jurassic Brexit" attempt.

(Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Editing by Jan Harvey)
((lefteris.karagiannopoulos@thomsonreuters.com; +47 23316519;
Reuters Messaging:
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