Abstract This paper focuses on the southern part of the East Midlands oil province, in which most hydrocarbon reservoirs are in Carboniferous strata and are primarily oil producing. The oils are predominantly sourced from the Namurian interbedded shales in the Gainsborough Trough and are trapped within anticlinal structures. Oil and gas exploration and production in the UK was marked by the Hardstoft-1 discovery in 1919. Since this discovery, more than 33 fields have been discovered in the East Midlands oil province, including the fields studied in this paper: Egmanton (in 1955), Bothamsall and Corringham (in 1958), Gainsborough and Beckingham (in 1959), South Leverton (in 1960), Glentworth (in 1961), and, the UK's second largest onshore field, Welton (in 1981). All of these fields produce from a Carboniferous petroleum system, sourced from Pendleian-age shales, reservoired in Namurian- and Westphalian-age sands, and trapped predominantly via structural, anticlinal traps.

Abstract The Crosby Warren Field is located onshore the UK, south of the Humber Estuary. It was discovered by RTZ Oil & Gas with the CW-1 (L46/12-3) well in 1986. The oil reservoir is Carboniferous, Namurian, Beacon Hill Flags sandstone, with gas found in Namurian sandstones of the Rough Rock, and the discovery well originally flowed waxy 40° API oil at rates of 45 bopd, which increased to nearly 700 bopd following fracture stimulation. The Beacon Hill Flags are a 10 m-thick group of laminated sandstones within a substantial gross thickness of sandstones, silts, muds and occasional thin claystones. The expected ultimate recovery for the field will be about 0.9 MMbbl of oil and 0.7 bcf of gas. Almost all of the oil and gas have already been recovered, and end of life for the field is expected to be in 2022.

Abstract The Namurian and Westphalian sequences from the onshore well Scaftworth-B2, located in the Gainsborough Trough, central England, have been analysed for whole-rock inorganic geochemical data via inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and mass spectrometry (MS). The changes within key elements, and elemental ratios, results in a chemostratigraphic zonation scheme consisting of eight chemostratigraphic sequences and 13 chemostratigraphic packages, providing the type zonation for the Bowland Shale and overlying formations. Mineralogical data are provided by whole rock X-ray diffraction (XRD) and are used to calibrate the mineral modelling in order to generate a modelled mineral log for the study well. Furthermore, the modelled mineralogy is then used to calculate a relative brittleness for the samples, which can then be collaborated with traditional rock properties data at a later date. Elemental data can also be used to model the relative abundance of detrital quartz and biogenic silica; while total silicon is detected by ICP, biogenic silica is not detected by XRD owing to its amorphous nature. Enrichment factors calculated from the inorganic elemental data suggest that the sediment was deposited in an unrestricted marine setting, which experienced periods of anoxia.