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This book provides a comprehensive review of the petroleum geology of Ireland and its very extensive continental shelf. The authors chart the fifty-year history of petroleum exploration in Ireland, from early drilling onshore to the present frontier exploration in the deep water Atlantic basins. The structural framework and regional geological setting of the sedimentary basins is described in two chapters, and this is followed by a review of the history of Irish onshore and offshore exploration, together with an outline of the licensing framework. The onshore basins, largely Carboniferous and older, are then considered as they guided the initial understanding of the younger offshore geological framework. Pre-Permian to Cenozoic stratigraphy of the region is explained in five chapters, each illustrated by palaeogeographic maps that are based both on onshore geology and on the results of offshore drilling. The major regional groups of basins are then considered and, for each, there is analysis of basin development and petroleum systems, together with a review of their exploration history, plays, and prospects. The Celtic Sea basins, south of Ireland, contain a thick Mesozoic succession and host a number of producing petroleum fields and sub-commercial discoveries.
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PETROLEUM GEOLOGY OF IRELAND David Naylor and Patrick M. Shannon
Published by Dunedin Academic Press Ltd Hudson House 8 Albany Street Edinburgh EH1 3QB Scotland ISBN: 978-1-906716-13-4 © David Naylor and Patrick M. Shannon 2011 The right of David Naylor and Patrick M. Shannon to be identified as the authors of this book has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 & 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written permission, except for fair dealing under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended or in accordance with a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Society in respect of photocopying or reprographic reproduction. Full acknowledgment as to author, publisher and source must be given. Application for permission for any other use of copyright material should be made in writing to the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Makar Publishing Production, Edinburgh Printed in Poland, produced by Hussar Book
Preface Fifty years have now elapsed since the start of petroleum exploration in Ireland. In that time there have been periodic phases of enthusiastic exploration, both onshore and offshore, interspersed with periods of inactivity and reflection. While the results of the exploration have been modest if measured solely in terms of discoveries of oil and gas, they have yielded an enormous amount of new knowledge regarding the extent and evolution of the sedimentary basins and their underlying basement rocks. A vast amount of new geological and geophysical information has been gathered and analysed, and has led to new models for basin formation and the development of new petroleum plays. In addition, petroleum exploration in the offshore has led to a better understanding of the recent and modern history of deep-water basins and to a realisation of the interplay between the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. It is interesting to compare the current understanding of the basins, their internal sedimentary architecture and controls, with the knowledge and ideas that were current at various times in the past 50 years. The large volume of new information, acquired and published in the past couple of decades, has been the major stimulus for the writing of this book. In it we hope to convey the present understanding of the petroleum geolog