Effects of adjacent fault systems on drainage patterns and evolution of uplifted rift shoulders: The Lower Cretaceous in the Loppa High, southwestern Barents Sea

Exploring the reservoir potential of Lower Cretaceous Clinoforms in the Fingerdjupet Subbasin, Norwegian Barents Sea

“…The latest Jurassic to Hauterivian reactivation phase generated local accommodation space, in the FSB and the western Bjarmeland Platform, which was filled, during the Barremian, by a SE prograding clinoform system (Serck et al, ). This prograding system had an inferred source area towards the NW/N of the study area, linked to regional uplift related to the High Arctic Large Igneous Province (HALIP) (Faleide, Vågnes, & Gudlaugsson, ; Grundvåg et al, ; Marín, Escalona, Grundvåg, Nøhr‐Hansen, & Kairanov, ; Midtkandal et al, ; Midtkandal & Nystuen, ; Senger, Tveranger, Ogata, Braathen, & Planke, ). Also, the Stappen High and Loppa High (Figure ) experienced uplift in the early Cretaceous (Anell, Faleide, & Braathen, ; Indrevær, Gabrielsen, & Faleide, ).…”

“…Clinoform deposition was followed by Aptian and younger rifting and subsidence (e.g. Anell et al, ; Blaich, Tsikalas, & Faleide, ; Faleide et al, ; Indrevær et al, ; Marin et al, ; Serck et al, ) and kilometre‐scale uplift and erosion in the Cenozoic (Henriksen et al, ). The combined effects are erosion of the Cretaceous succession over the Stappen and Loppa Highs and deep burial of the succession in the Bjørnøya Basin (Figure ).…”

“…The MRS represents peak regression of the entire progradational clinoform system in Sequences S1 and S2 (Grundvåg et al, ; Marin et al, , ). This is a complex surface in the north‐western FSB where transgressive ravinement appears to have modified an older erosional unconformity (the BrU, Figure ).…”

“…Minor displacement of east‐facing faults during this period suggests that the MTCs were controlled by tectonic activity within the subbasin (Serck et al, ). During the early Barremian, uplift of the eastern flank of the Loppa High (Indrevær et al, ; Marín et al, ) may have resulted in a narrow, periodically anoxic trench on the western flank, that is, FSB. The frontal sectors of the clinoforms infilled this subbasin towards the uplifted area (Figure a).…”

“…Continued sedimentation may have gradually filled this trench resulting in more agitated shallow‐water conditions and a basin physiography that promoted storm surges with, by the end of the Barremian, the potential to build sand‐prone subaqueous deltas (10b). Renewed uplift and eastwards tilting of the Loppa High during the Aptian‐Albian (Marín et al, ; Serck et al, ) and Cenozoic uplift (Henriksen et al, ) resulted in preservation of complex sequences of eroded (Figure c) and faulted (Figure d) clinoforms that are shallowly buried under the Aptian and Quaternary unconformities (Figure e). The resultant complexity severely hampers accurate or detailed reconstruction of the basin physiography at the time of clinoform deposition.…”