North Sea Oil - How did it get here?

It may seem surprising that the Oil industry has waited until recently to explore the coast of the British Isles for any oil or gas deposits. A shallow water area such as the North Sea would almost certainly yield some Oil or Gas and it had been a matter of conjecture for some years that oil and gas deposits could be found and exploited. In the mid 1960s real efforts were made to explore the Southern part of the North Sea and in 1965 hydrocarbons were found. A brief history of this exciting time can be found at The History page.

The North West European Geological garden which has been dug over hundreds of millions of years by erosion, deposition, uplifting and then more erosion. At the present time the North Sea is part of the depositional basin collecting the debris brought down by large European rivers. In times past this sea stretched halfway across Britain and Holland whilst at other times the North Sea was itself land.

About 250 million years ago the sea area which was collecting sediment stretched right across the UK Midlands, through the North Sea's present location and far into Holland and Germany.

Although the exact process is complex it was possible for geologists to predict with a reasonable amount of certainty where sedimentary oil-bearing rock was likely to have been laid down at this period.

Most of the large oil-producing areas of the world are in the tropics. Considering first these oil fields contained in recently deposited rocks - say thirty million years old - they are found to lie in the tropical belt. It is only the oil found in the older rocks that is in the higher Northern or Southern latitudes. This observation leads to the assumption that petroleum is not only associated with marine sedimentary rocks, but also with those rocks that were deposited in tropical climates.