Volume 18 (2012): Issue 3 (October 2012)

Fining-upwards cyclothems found in five boreholes in the Carboniferous (Lower Bashkirian) of the Lublin Basin were analysed sedimentologically. It was established that the cyclothems represent fluvial deposits, and the lithofacies were grouped into lithofacies associations. Most lithofacies associations represent three types of sand-bed braided rivers: (1) high-energy, (2) deep and (3) distal sheetflood-affected. Other associations represent hyperconcentrated flows. Both coarse-grained (type I) and fine-grained (types IIa and IIb) occur among the fining-upward cyclothems. The formation of most thick cyclothems was related mainly to allocyclic factors, i.e. a decrease in the river’s gradient. The thickest fining-upward cyclothems are characteristic of hyperconcentrated flows and braided-river channels. The aggradation ratios were commonly high.

During the early Namurian C and early Westphalian A (Early Bashkirian), the eastern part of the Lublin Basin was located close to the source area. The sedimentary succession developed due to a transition from high-energy braidedrivers and hyperconcentrated flows to lower-energy braided rivers, controlled by a rise of the regional base level.

Hydrocarbon exploration in The Netherlands has a chequered history from serendipitous oil shows via chance oil/ gas discoveries to finding the largest continental European oil field in 1943, followed by finding the largest gas field in the world in 1959. The present contribution traces the development of moderate to good porosity/permeability trends in depositional facies of Zechstein Stassfurt carbonates in a ‘gas play’ intermediate in significance between the above two plays but all in the northern part of The Netherlands. Various depositional facies in the Stassfurt carbonates were turned into ‘carbonate fabric units’ by diagenetic processes creating or occluding the porosity/permeability. This formed moderate to good gas reservoirs in barrier-shoal, open-marine shelf and proximal-slope carbonates in the subsurface of the province of Drenthe in the NE Netherlands. The diagenetic models forming these carbonate fabric units are linked to the variety of facies in a depositional model which shows explain and predicts the reservoir trends. Such depositional/diagenetic facies are ‘translated’ into characteristic petrophysical values recognisable on wire line logs in uncored wells, and in characteristic seismic expressions that show these trends in undrilled areas. This approach has been proven to be effective in delineating porosity trends, visualised by 3-D seismic in the Collendoornerveen field, and thus provides a new exploration ‘tool’ in hydrocarbon exploration .

Several important earthquake source models that have been extensively used in seismological research and earthquake prediction are presented and discussed. A new fault source model is used to explain the earthquake focal mechanism solution and tectonic stress field, which play a crucial role in earthquake initiation and preparation. The elastodynamic-dislocation theory is demonstrated which provides the theoretical background of most earthquake source models. Important earthquake source models reviewed here include the double-force-couple point-source model, the circular-shear dislocation model, the finite moving-source model, the Brune model, and the spherical explosive source model.