Description:
Petroleum Geology of Ireland provides a comprehensive review of the petroleum geology of Ireland and its very extensive continental shelf. The authors chart the fifty-year history of petroleum exploration in Ireland, from early drilling onshore to the present frontier exploration in the deep water Atlantic basins.
The Pre-Permian to Cenozoic stratigraphy of the region is explained in five chapters, each illustrated by palaeogeographic maps that are based both on onshore geology and on the results of offshore drilling. The four major regional groups of basins are then considered and for each there is analysis of basin development and petroleum systems, together with a review of their exploration history, plays and prospects. The onshore basins are considered first. Then the Northern Ireland-Irish Sea basins, these contain a thick Upper Palaeozoic to early Mesozoic succession. The Celtic Sea basins south of Ireland contain a thick Mesozoic succession and host a number of producing petroleum fields and sub-commercial discoveries. Finally, the Atlantic Margin basins, with thick successions of Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments, are the largest and least well explored of the Irish basin groups but offer a number of promising oil and gas discoveries.
Future and potential petroleum prospects in the Irish offshore region are fully reviewed in a separate chapter. The book, which contains a comprehensive reference list, will be of value to oil industry geoscientists seeking to understanding Irish onshore and offshore geology and to academic researchers with an interest in marine and petroleum geology.

Dr David Naylor is an independent consultant with more than forty years experience in the oil industry. He is a visiting researcher at both Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. Professor Patrick M. Shannon is Professor of Geology at University College Dublin and a past Chairman of the Irish branch of the Institute of Petroleum (now the Energy Institute).