Models of burial diagenesis for deep exploration plays in Jurassic fault traps of the Central and Northern North Sea
Authors: BURLEY S. D. 
Published: April 2010

With increasing burial depth, intergranular porosity declines in a predictable manner according to theoretical and empirically established mathematical relationships. In basins with simple structural and thermal histories, average porosity can often be represented as an exponential function of depth. There are, however, common significant deviations from such a simple model of porosity evolution. Four mechanisms are recognized by which enhanced porosity may be generated or maintained during burial:

development of overpressures due to restricted pore fluid escape;

inhibition of mechanical compaction by selective cementation;

inhibition of cementation as a result of hydrocarbon accumulation; or

generation of secondary porosity due to either grain or cement dissolution together with simultaneous removal of reaction products.

Secondary porosity may be generated either near the surface by the ingress of dilute meteoric-derived waters or at depth by the generation of ‘aggressive’ pore fluids. Deep burial diagnesis may encompass both closed and open system porosity generating reactions. In closed systems, increase in temperature concomitant with burial overcomes kinetic barriers enabling dissolution of metastable detrital minerals. By contrast, in more open systems, movement of fluids from either mudstones or evaporites to either overlying or adjacent sandstones introduces chemical disequilibrium that may cause mineral dissolution. Rapid, intermittent movement of fluids along active faults may additionally introduce temperature disequilibrium to further facilitate mineral dissolution in the proximity of faults. Over geological periods of time, however, faults are barriers to fluid flow and provide a mechanism for generating overpressure.

In the Central and Northern North Sea basins, an upper diagenetic regime is separated from a lower diagenetic regime by a regional cover of Cretaceous mudstones and chalks. The Cretaceous sediments provide a regional seal which often coincides with the development of overpressure above deep graben centres reflecting restricted pore water escape. Fluid and solute movement between these two regimes is only possible where faults or gas chimneys penetrate the Cretaceous seal. In the upper regime, porosity loss in Tertiary sediments broadly conforms to the predicted decline of porosity with depth. In the lower regime, Jurassic sandstones on structural highs are characterized by extensive secondary porosity resulting from feldspar grain and carbonate cement dissolution, best preserved where oil accumulation rapidly follows porosity generation. Enhanced porosity can be expected either where sandstones interdigitate with mudstones or in graben centre plays adjacent to faults. This contrasts with graben margin plays where faults are the locus of pronounced cementation and complex diagenetic sequences are developed. In the absence of either oil accumulation or overpressure, secondary porosity either compacts or is occluded by a characteristic deep burial authigenic mineral assemblage. The present heat flow in the North Sea can be interpreted in terms of a residual thermobaric fluid flow from basin centres to basin margins which was probably initiated during the early Tertiary, coincident with the onset of rapid thermal relaxation subsidence.