Kimmeridge Bay Oil Field and Wytch Farm

 

by Morgan Windram

 

Due to the geographic location and difficulty reaching each of these sites, we did not visit the Kimmeridge Bay Oil Field or the Wytch Farm (British Petroleum) however; I briefed the group on my findings of the two locations. 

 

Below you will see a Map of the Kimmeridge Bay complete with Geological labeling and a legend for identification.

 

The Kimmerdige Bay is composed of Blackstone which is Kimmerdige oil shale.  You can see it if you go east of Kimmeridge at Clavell’s Hard.  Now it is an inaccessible quarry situated on a cliff, but was once a productive mining area.  They used underground mines here and also a bit inland.  The composition of the sediments is Kimmeridge Clay, dolomite bedding, crushed ammonites which have formed layers of these rocks. 

 

 

 

The Wytch Farm oil field can be found in the South-east of Dorset in Southern England; it extends to Poole Bay and is the largest onshore oil field in Europe.  Up to 300 million barrels of recoverable reserves are available.  Operated by British Petroleum Amoco Exploration (on behalf of its partners Premier Oil Exploration Ltd, ARCO British Ltd, ONEPM Petroleum, Clyde Petroleum Ltd and Talisman North Sea Ltd).  Originally the plans were to build the field on an artificial island offshore, but the high capital cost and lack of oil production during platform construction forced British Petroleum to search for a more economic alternative.  It was necessary to focus on preserving the landscape and stressing archaeological and conservational importance of the area beneath Poole Harbour (where the oil would be extracted).  Sensitive planning was needed to assure that proper care to protect the environment was taken.  They recruited employees from CEH to obtain the range of specialists needed to assess the ecological implications of any proposals made and to advise on the restoration of areas with semi-natural communities that had been destroyed by any construction activity already.  The assessment involved many stages from a large scale to a small detailed scale.  Areas susceptible to damage from construction activity were identified within the Wytch Farm development and along the oil export pipeline to Hamble oil terminal.  They determined possible alternatives.  Restoration was required in many areas techniques such as seeding, turfing, and clodding, were used to restore saltmarsh vegetation.  Erosion control was key.  Monitoring the project was also important because they needed to assure that the biological communities were not harmed in any way.  Constant updates and refinements to the process were needed and done according to patterns of change within the ecological system.      

 

 

Works Cited:

 

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/kim.htm

http://www.ougswessex.fsnet.co.uk/WytchFarm.html

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/geology/8361/1999/sarah/intro.htm