A 546 km2 3D seismic reflection survey was acquired in 2012 to better map the Cambo discovery and plan subsequent drilling.
With the news this week that Shell and Siccar Point have been awarded a two-year licence extension over Cambo, the interest into developing this significant oil accumulation in Eocene paralic sandstones will have had a significant boost following a few months of speculation about the future of the field.
However, rather than mapping the Hildasay reservoir, the seismic data covering the Cambo discovery can also be used for other exciting purposes. This is clearly demonstrated by a paper published by Simona Caruso and co-authors in Marine Geology this month. Simona works on her PhD project at Aberdeen University besides her position at consultancy firm Vysus where she is mainly working on the interpretation of shallow seismic data for the offshore industry.
In her paper, Simona describes what is known as a Trough Mouth Fan system, which is located in the Cambo area. During the Pleistocene, when Britain including its shallow shelves were covered by ice-sheets, large volumes of sediment were transported across the continental slope into the deeper parts of the Continental Margin. Through Mouth Fans form the depositional record of these events.
It is due to high resolution data such as the seismic survey now covering Cambo that the internal sedimentary architecture of these fan systems can now be investigated in much more detail, as the image below shows. It is just one of the many images available in the paper. This image shows the basal surface of the fan system as mapped in the seismic, revealing a central channel and many smaller offshoots.
Through analysing the seismic data in detail, Simona and her co-workers have now been able to refine the 3D architecture of this distal part of the glacigenic basin fan system. It turns out to be more heterogeneous in terms of depositional mechanisms, with features suggesting debris flow deposits as well as turbidites.
If you want to know more, please have a look at the paper.
HENK KOMBRINK
