Abstract
A comprehensive, multi-disciplinary study involving structural geology, organic petrology, organic geochemistry and isotope geochemistry has been carried out on the structural and maturity development, source rocks, and hydrocarbons in 67 hydrocarbon fields within the Lower Saxony Basin, NW Germany. The hydrocarbons were generated from two source rocks, the Liassic Posidonia shale and the “Wealden” bituminous shales of Ryazanian age (occurring exclusively in the west). The occurrence of different oil types in the fields is explained by the regional distribution of the source rocks and the existence of reservoir rocks overlying the respective source rocks.
The hydrocarbons generated during the subsidence phase of the central parts of the basin (Late Jurassic-Late Turonian) have been totally lost. The few palaeo-traps still existing today could not have been filled due to the immaturity of the nearby source rocks. The bulk of the traps originated during the inversion phase in Santonian times.
Present-day maturities of the source rocks indicate an oil window between 0.5 and 0.85% Rr for the Posidonia shale and between 0.45 and 0.8% Rr for the “Wealden” shales. More highly mature source rocks produce only condensates, wet and dry gas. Maturity estimates of petroleum (oils and associated gases) coincide well with present-day source-rock maturities in the immediate vicinity or directly under the oil fields, pointing to very short migration paths.
The hydrocarbons exploited today in the basin must all be younger than 88 million years, the bulk of it generated probably in subrecent times or during the Late Tertiary.
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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Binot, F., Gerling, P., Hiltmann, W., Kockel, F., Wehner, H. (1993). The Petroleum System in the Lower Saxony Basin. In: Spencer, A.M. (eds) Generation, Accumulation and Production of Europe’s Hydrocarbons III. Special Publication of the European Association of Petroleum Geoscientists, vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77859-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77859-9_11
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