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Petroleum Geoscience; December 2001; v. 7; no. 4; p. 371-388
© 2001 Geological Society of London
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Articles

Sequential dip-slip fault movement during rifting: a new model for the evolution of the Jurassic trilete North Sea rift system

R. J. Davies1, J. D. Turner2 and J. R. Underhill2

1 ExxonMobil Exploration Co., 233 Benmar, Houston, Texas 77060, USA (e-mail:richard_davies{at}email.exxonmobil.com)
2 Department of Geology and Geophysics, Grant Institute, The University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK (e-mail:jturner{at}glg.ed.ac.uk/jru{at}glg.ed.ac.uk)

Controversy has long surrounded the kinematics of faulting in the Middle–Late Jurassic North Sea trilete rift system. Integration of structural styles and subsidence analysis derived from well-constrained seismic interpretation enables a new, unified model to be proposed in which strike-slip was negligible, dip-slip extension predominated throughout the rifting episode and normal faults were active sequentially not synchronously. Extension was initiated on N–S and NNE–SSW trending faults during the Bathonian and Callovian, NE–SW and E–W structures during the Oxfordian and NW–SE faults during the Kimmeridgian and Volgian. The results allow us to speculate that fault activity was driven by variations in the prevailing far-field stress regime that were superimposed upon a trilete junction that formed as consequence of Middle Jurassic thermal doming. Significantly, rotation of the stress field during rifting is similar in other rifts, such as the Afro-Arabian system.

KEYWORDS: stress, sequence, kinematics, dip-slip fault, rotation (geology)






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