United Kingdom Oil and Gas Fields: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Volume
Geological Society Memoir 52 records the extraordinary journey of more than 50 years that has led to the development of some 458 oil and gas fields on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). It contains papers on almost 150 onshore and offshore fields in all of the UK's main petroliferous basins. These papers range from look-backs on some of the first-developed gas fields in the Southern North Sea, to papers on fields that have only just been brought into production or may still remain undeveloped, and includes two candidate CO2 sequestration projects.
These papers are intended to provide a consistent summary of the exploration, appraisal, development and production history of each field, leading to the current subsurface understanding which is described in greater detail. As such, the Memoir will be an enduring reference source for those exploring for, developing, producing hydrocarbons and sequestering CO2 on the UKCS in the coming decades. It encapsulates the petroleum industry's deep subsurface knowledge accrued over more than 50 years of exploration and production.
The Babbage Field, Block 48/2a, UK North Sea
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Published:October 30, 2020
Abstract
The Babbage gas field was discovered in 1988 by exploration well 48/2-2 which drilled into the Permian-age lower Leman Sandstone Formation below a salt wall. Seismic imaging is compromised by the presence of this salt wall, which runs east–west across the southern part of the structure, creating uncertainties in depth conversion and in the in-place volumes. Pre-stack depth migration with beam and reverse time migrations appropriate for the complex salt geometry provided an uplift in subsalt seismic imaging, enabling the development of the field, which is located at the northern edge of the main reservoir fairway in a mixed aeolian–fluvial setting. Advances in artificial fracturing technology were also critical to the development: in this area, deep burial is associated with the presence of pore-occluding clays, which reduce the reservoir permeability to sub-millidarcy levels. The Babbage Field was sanctioned in 2008, based on an in-place volume range of 248–582 bcf; first production was in 2010. It produces from five horizontal development wells that were artificially fracced to improve deliverability of gas from the tight matrix. None of the wells has drilled the gas–water contact, which remains a key uncertainty to the in-place volumes, along with depth-conversion uncertainty below the salt wall.
- Atlantic Ocean
- Carboniferous
- clastic rocks
- displacements
- England
- Europe
- faults
- geophysical methods
- geophysical profiles
- Great Britain
- history
- imagery
- Leman Sandstone Formation
- Lower Permian
- Namurian
- North Atlantic
- North Sea
- oil and gas fields
- oil wells
- Paleozoic
- permeability
- Permian
- petroleum
- petroleum exploration
- production
- reflection methods
- reserves
- reservoir rocks
- sandstone
- sedimentary rocks
- seismic methods
- seismic profiles
- United Kingdom
- Western Europe
- Yorkshire England
- Cleveland Basin
- Sole Pit Basin
- Flamborough Head
- Dowsing fault zone
- Rotliegend Group
- Silverpit Basin
- De Keyser Fault
- Babbage Field