Events & Courses

February is our traditional joint meeting with the Liverpool Geological Association.

This year we are privileged to have Dr Richard Worden, Liverpool University who will be discussing the Formby Oil Field. This is a fairly little known oil field which had been exploited adjacent the airport over a very limited period of time. This is currently within the larger Bowland Basin and hence has Shale Gas implications.

This is also a potential source of contamination (ground gas and hydrocarbon leaks) which is largely unknown to most ground investigation companies.

We strongly recommend this lecture.

The Formby oil field was one of the first commercial oil fields in the UK. It was discovered in the lead up to the Second World War following reports of oil seepages in fields and ditches in West Lancashire. It produced a small amount of oil at an ever diminishing rate and finally ceased activity in the 1960s.

The field has a Lower Triassic Sandstone reservoir with a very unconventional caprock: unlithified glacial till. The oil was originally sourced from Carboniferous marine coals, probably from the Bowland Group. Offshore to the west, there is a cluster of major oil and gas fields (Lennox, Hamilton, Douglas), buried somewhat deeper than the Formby oil field and with a much more effective cap rock in the very thick Middle and Upper Triassic mudstones and evaporites of the Mercia Mudstone Group.

Onshore conventional accumulations in the Lower Triassic Sandstones will always have limited volumes where the Mercia Mudstone is thin or absent. Much deeper, below the Permo-Triassic succession, there is the possibility of finding commercial accumulations of shale gas in the thick, organic rich and thermally mature Carboniferous Bowland Shale. This controversial resource may yet allow West Lancashire and nearby areas to become a focus for energy

Speaker

Prof Richard Worden

Prof Richard Worden has been a Geology academic at Liverpool University for over 15 years. He first took a BSc in Geology and Geochemistry at Manchester University from 1981 to 1984, and then completed a PhD in Geology, also at Manchester, in 1988.

This was followed by 1 year of post-doctoral research at Edinburgh University and then 6 years working as a sedimentary geochemist for BP at Sunbury on Thames. Between BP and Liverpool, he worked for 5 years as a geology lecturer at Queens University in Belfast.

Time

7.00pm prompt

Venue

Lecture Theatre 137
John Moore University
James Parsons Building
Byrom Street
Liverpool, L3 3AF

Main entrance, upstairs, follow corridor round, upper atrium, then follow corridor to the end.