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Unlocking the Palaeozoic Hydrocarbon Potential in the Offshore Isle of Man
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 80th EAGE Conference and Exhibition 2018, Jun 2018, Volume 2018, p.1 - 5
Abstract
The East Irish Sea Basin is a well-explored petroleum province with the majority of discoveries producing from the Triassic Sherwood Sandstone reservoir, in particular the Ormskirk Sandstone Formation. Recent studies, built on work done by the 21st Century Exploration Roadmap, have developed two Palaeozoic plays in the Permian Collyhurst Sandstone and in Carboniferous limestones, which could be prospective. The Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown Dependency is located in the Irish Sea between England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1991, the Isle of Man bought the exclusive rights to a 12-mile territorial sea limit from the UK government. These waters sit directly north of the main Keys sub-basin of the East Irish Sea Basin. Early exploration in these waters began in the 1980’s, which resulted in a gas show from well 112/25a-1 drilled in 1982 by BP. This encountered gas shows in 220m of gross sand in the deeper Permian Collyhurst Sandstone ( Cameron, 2013 ). Recent studies have shown this prospect was not fully tested and the well drilled into a fault damaged zone in the footwall rather than the targeted hanging wall structure, giving poor reservoir properties. Prospect analysis suggests 1–2 tcf of recoverable gas maybe present in these plays.