In order to improve the understanding of how the high northern latitudes responded to the escalating warming which led to the middle Cretaceous super greenhouse climate, more temperature proxy records from the High Arctic are needed. One of the current obstacles in obtaining such records is poor age control on the Lower Cretaceous strata in the Boreal region. Here, we provide a biostratigraphic ...

The Lower Cretaceous succession in the Barents Sea is listed as a potential play model by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. Reservoirs may occur in deep to shallow marine clastic wedges located in proximity to palaeo-highs and along basin margins. In addition, shelf-prism-scale clinoforms with high amplitude anomalies in their top- and bottomsets have been reported from reflection seismic but ...

The beginning of the Norwegian oil industry is often attributed to the first exploration drilling in the North Sea in 1966, the first discovery in 1967 and the discovery of the supergiant Ekofisk field in 1969. However, petroleum exploration already started onshore Svalbard in 1960 with three mapping groups from Caltex and exploration efforts by the Dutch company Bataaffse (Shell) and the Norwegian ...

The dominance of isotropic hummocky cross‐stratification, recording deposition solely by oscillatory flows, in many ancient storm‐dominated shoreface–shelf successions is enigmatic. Based on conventional sedimentological investigations, this study shows that storm deposits in three different and stratigraphically separated siliciclastic sediment wedges within the Lower Cretaceous succession in ...

Detailed sedimentological investigations of the Lower Cretaceous succession of southernmost Spitsbergen indicate deposition during a long-term fall and rise in relative sea level. The Rurikfjellet Formation shows an overall regressive development and consists of offshore deposits grading upwards into progradationally stacked shoreface parasequences. The overlying Helvetiafjellet Formation shows a ...

The Svalbard Composite Tectono-Sedimentary Element (SCTSE) is located on the northwestern corner of the Barents Shelf and comprises a Carboniferous–Pleistocene sedimentary succession. Due to Cenozoic uplift, the succession is subaerially exposed in the Svalbard archipelago. The oldest parts of the succession consist of Carboniferous–Permian mixed siliciclastic, carbonate and evaporite, and spiculitic ...

The hydrodynamic mechanisms responsible for the genesis and facies variability of shallow‐marine sandstone storm deposits (tempestites) have been intensely debated, with particular focus on hummocky cross‐stratification. Despite being ubiquitously utilized as diagnostic elements of high‐energy storm events, the full formative process spectrum of tempestites and hummocky cross‐stratification is still ...

From 2007 to 2015, eight wells were drilled and fully cored to test the feasibility of storing CO₂ emitted from the coal-fueled power plant in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The drilling campaign identified three water-bearing sandstone aquifers; i) a lower aquifer in Upper Triassic strata; ii) a middle aquifer in Upper Triassic to Middle Jurassic; and iii) an upper aquifer in Lower Cretaceous ...