Scientists discover giant ‘sinkites’ beneath the North Sea – suggesting ‘implications for carbon storage’

CCS process [credit: European Commission]

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The research could also aid oil and gas discovery, but puts a question mark over plans to bury carbon dioxide under the North Sea. The study says: ‘‘sinkites’ introduce a new large-scale gravitational process into geology. Their discovery and association to fractured low density ooze is important to…petroleum and CO2 storage projects and may have other implications.’
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Press release:
Scientists have discovered hundreds of giant sand bodies beneath the North Sea that appear to defy fundamental geological principles and could have important implications for energy and carbon storage.

Using high-resolution 3D seismic (sound wave) imaging, combined with data and rock samples from hundreds of wells, researchers from The University of Manchester in collaboration with industry, identified vast mounds of sand – some several kilometres wide – that appear to have sunk downward, displacing older, lighter and softer materials from beneath them.

The result is stratigraphic inversion – a reversal of the usual geological order in which younger rocks are typically deposited on top of older ones on a previously unseen scale.

Lead author Professor Mads Huuse from The University of Manchester, said: “This discovery reveals a geological process we haven’t seen before on this scale. What we’ve found are structures where dense sand has sunk into lighter sediments that floated to the top of the sand, effectively flipping the conventional layers we’d expect to see and creating huge mounds beneath the sea.”
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The finding could help scientists better predict where oil and gas might be trapped and where it’s safe to store carbon dioxide underground.

Prof Huuse said: “This research shows how fluids and sediments can move around in the Earth’s crust in unexpected ways. Understanding how these sinkites formed could significantly change how we assess underground reservoirs, sealing, and fluid migration — all of which are vital for carbon capture and storage”.

Now the team are busy documenting other examples of this process and assessing how exactly it impacts our understanding of subsurface reservoirs and sealing intervals.
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Image: CCS process [credit: European Commission]

Research article: Km-scale mounds and sinkites formed by buoyancy driven stratigraphic inversion