Report on the NORLEX workshop at Statoil, Stavanger
19 January 2006.
Present:
Iain Prince, Martin Pearce, Kjell-Sigve Lervik, Sverre Henriksen, Gitte Laursen, Ian
Wreglesworth, Felix Gradstein.
Oslo
23 January 2006
Norwegian Stratigraphic Committee
A summary of the role and function of the Norwegian Stratigraphic Committee (NSK)
was given by committee member Kjell-Sigve Lervik. NORLEX is advised to use the
guidelines and recommendations of the International Stratigraphic Guide (A.Salvador ed.,
1994). These guidelines are posted under www.stratigraphy.org, and for the convenience
of NORLEX for the lithostrat part also under http://norges.uio.no (NORLEX front page,
lowermost button). Kjell-Sigve advised to check the NGU website for a listing of preoccupied names when creating new lithostratigraphic units, and also recommends we
involve NSK (presently under re-organisation) early-on when peer reviewing the formal
results of NORLEX.
Cretaceous
Mike Charnock (co-author Steve Crittenden) gave an excellent overview of potential
modifications and updates to the Cretaceous lithostratigraphy, offshore mid Norway. The
Jan Mayen facture zone is the approximate southern boundary of the area under
consideration, with the 67 degree parallel a convenient northern limit. NORLEX shall
make a map showing which units are valid in what region. The descriptions of Dallard et
al. feed into the upcoming revision.
UPPER CRETACEOUS
 Maintain consistency with Dalland as far as possible.
 Redefine Shetland Group (base)
 Maintain Springar, Nise, Kvitnos & (Lyr) Formations (as per Dalland 1988).
 Define sandstones as members (require new names)
 Springar & Jorsalfare Sandstones
 Nise Sandstone
 Kvitnos Sandstones 1 & 2
’MID’ CRETACEOUS
 Redefine Cromer Knoll Group
 Redefine Lysing as a member of ?Lange Fm.
 Redefine Lange Formation: ?upper/lower usage.
 Lange Sandstones (?K40, k52, k54: ?practical)
 Work in progress in Døna Terrace area.
 Extend usage of Blodøks Fm. into mid Norway
 ?Define a Svarte Fm equivalent.
LOWER CRETACEOUS (limited revision)
 Usage of ?lower Lange as a formation.
The lower boundary of the Shetland Group should be taken at the top of the Lyr
Formation, with the Cromer Knoll Group extending from the Jurassic-Cretaceous
unconformity up to the top of Lyr. This correctly separates a more marly Cromer Knol
from a siliciclast Shetland unit.
The Springar sand member should get its type section in the 6704/12-1 (Gjallar) well, and
the underlying Nise sand member in the 674/10-1 well. The bathyal, gravity-flow
Springar sands are locally overlain by shallow marine, glauconitic sands, to be assigned a
separate member status. A Kvitnos ss member can be defined in the 6706/11-1 well.
North of the Jan Mayen fracture zone the Blodoks Formation is poorly developed
We will post all details on the NORLEX website, once released by Mike.
Late May 2006 we will have a follow-up meeting on the Cretaceous at Norsk Hydro in
Bergen (host Mike Charnock). Felix Gradstein will look into acquiring seismic across
potential type and reference wells, and pull out formation (Member) tops from the NPD
website.
Paleogene
Egga Mbr - Mike Charnock and Felix Gradstein have made the Egga Mbr description
more complete, and will place it on the web. What is currently lacking in the text is
detailed biostratigraphy, but that should be easy to fix given the amount of work done on
the unit.
Siri Mb – 2 ss levels; 3/6-1 is the ref well which is very poorly dated by Stratlab for
AGIP. Iain Prince will tie the well to 3/7-1 for better biostrat correlations
Eigerøy Mb replaced by Kolga Mb, using the priority in the DGU forthcoming
publication. The basal, blocky ss in the 3/6-1 is the type
The lower boundary of the Lista Fm is transitional to the Våle Fm in the
Norwegian/Danish Basin area. Discussion that Lithostrat is based on mapable units, not on biostrat
or chronostrat.
Tare and Tang units in mid Norway are valid.
Vidar Mb – This unit is problematic in dating, due to poor sampling, inadequate study
and reworking of carbonate lith material.
Morten and Felix have now (23 Januaru 2006) made updates to the text for the the
Hordaland Group, covering the units not dealt with by Harald. I will review this with
Harald on 24 january 2006, after which the information will be placed on the NORLEX
web site for review by the project.
Neogene – Nordland Group
Morten Smelror and Felix Gradstein have now (23 January 2006) made the Neogene
units largely complete, incl. more biostrat, log data etc., and sent to Oyvind to place on
the NORLEX website.
Jurassic-Cretaceous
With Kjell-sigve conveniently present at the Stavanger meeting, we discussed holding the
first Jurassic-Triassic meeting on Monday 13 March. Morten Bergan and Terje Hellem
are in charge. Kjell-Sigve Lervik is publishing an important revision of Triassic
lithostratigraphy.
Annual Consortium Meeting
The Annual Consortium Meeting in mid or late September 2006 may be held at NPD
over 2 days with core display of all units under the loupe now. Jim Ogg, USA may give
part of his excellent course: Geology, Oil and Politics that is steadily being update to
reflect the latest global developments.
We should discuss if a NORLEX phase 2 (after 2007) is viable, e.g. focusing on those
parts of Barents Sea that have not been studied for lithostrat (Cenozoic) + ? circum Arctic
(Russia).
TSCreator
Jim Ogg and associates are developing a Java platform routine called TSCreator that has
allows to draw bio-chronostratigraphic charts of any Phanerozoic interval with detailed
events attached. The time scale is GTS2004. Currently over 15000 events are
incorporated in the routine. All graphics can be saved as SVG files, that are read-in by all
modern drafting programs. The basic program and data can be downloaded free of charge
from www.stratigraphy.org .
Special versions of TSCreator can NOW be created for internal use of companies, e.g.
with GOM zonations, boreal stages and ammonite-dinos events for the VolgianRyazanian, Cretaceous bioevents of mid Norway, Paleogene events of Tampen, etc. This
is very little extra work (some of this data is already in the system). Excellent graphics
can thus be delivered almost instantaneously.