Research

Marine geoscientist with petroleum industry and offshore experience. The dominant research theme throughout my career has been 'Deepwater Sedimentary Systems: Resources, Hazards and Climate’. Academically, this has been largely focused on bottom currents and associated deposits. Industry experience has focused on 'Frontier Basins and Plays'. Gaining experience in the petroleum industry has given me a good multidisciplinary understanding of the evolution of extensional settings through to passive margins and their associated tectonostratigraphic make-up. The application of geoscience is central to my research.

Location of past projects. Orange: Regional exploration project. Blue: Research project. Green: Offshore experience.

Projects

The Zechstien of the Central North Sea: Geological evolution and implications for energy.

University of Aberdeen

2021 - present

The Zechstein of the Central North Sea is the newest hydrocarbon play in the UKCS with recent oil discoveries at the Ossian and Pensacola fields on the southern margin of the Mid North Sea High. Hydrocarbons are found in the Z2 Hauptdolomit reservoir and exploration activities are ongoing. But our understanding of the under-explored region of the Mid North Sea High remains limited, particularly the evolution of the Zechstein evaporite and carbonate sequence.

This research aims to reassess the geological evolution of the entire Zechstein succession to understand the controls on faicies distribution. This can be used to understand its suitability of energy stability and security in the UK through the distribution of hydrocarbon reservoir facies and source rocks, but also for its use in the energy transition. Halites have the potential for subsurface storage and sequestration of multiple gases including acting as a seal for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and the short term storage of methane, hydrogen and compressed air.

This research is being completed as part of the GeoNetZero CDT and supports the Government's energy and netzero emissions strategies.

Improving Subsurface Characterisation with 'Big Data' Mining and Machine Learning

Heriot-Watt University

2020

Data-driven workflow to improve subsurface understanding and data coverage. From Brackenridge et al. (2022) doi.org/10.3390/en15031070

Large databases of legacy hydrocarbon reservoir and well data provide an opportunity to use modern data mining techniques to improve our understanding of the subsurface in the presence of uncertainty and improve predictability of reservoir properties. A data mining approach provides a way to screen dependencies in reservoir and fluid data and enable subsurface specialists to estimate absent properties in partial or incomplete datasets. This allows for uncertainty to be managed and reduced. An improvement in reservoir characterisation using machine learning results from the capacity of machine learning methods to detect and model hidden dependencies in large multivariate datasets with noisy and missing data.  

This study presents a workflow applied to a large basin-scale reservoir characterization database. The study aims to understand the dependencies between reservoir attributes in order to allow for predictions to be made to improve the data coverage. The machine learning workflow comprises the following steps:

(i) exploratory data analysis;

(ii) detection of outliers and data partitioning into groups showing similar trends using clustering;

(iii) identification of dependencies within reservoir data in multivariate feature space with self-organising maps; and

(iv) feature selection using supervised learning to identify relevant properties to use for predictions where data are absent.

This workflow provides an opportunity to reduce the cost and increase accuracy of hydrocarbon exploration and production in mature basins.

Ocean currents and submarine landslides: assessing tsunami risk in the Makassar Strait

Heriot-Watt University

2019

Seismic section from the Makassar Strait. From Brackenridge et al. (2020) doi.org/10.1144/SP500-2019-171

Geohazards are one of the most critical factors that compromise the well-being and economic sustainability of coastal communities in Indonesia. Improving understanding of the location, frequency and magnitude of natural hazards is therefore vital to the economic development of the country and its people. Tsunamis in particular are a very significant hazard and risk in Indonesia, with a number of substantial events in the last 15 years. The 2004 megathrust earthquake and tsunami offshore Sumatra resulted in over 220,000 fatalities across the Indian Ocean region, making it one the worst natural disaster globally of the last 100 years.

This project is funded as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and aims to understand the specific role of ocean currents associated with the Indonesian Throughflow, the main transport pathway for water flowing from the Pacific to Indian Ocean, in modifying the continental slope offshore Indonesia, and preconditioning the slopes for submarine landslides. This oceanographic control on slope stability has largely been overlooked until now, but is likely to be a critical factor in controlling the location, frequency and magnitude of submarine landslides and consequent tsunamis. We will address this by using a multidisciplinary team from the UK and Indonesia, who can integrate observations and data from tectonic studies, geomorphology, oceanography and sedimentology to improve our understanding of the genesis of these events.

The Makassar Strait is an important oceanic gateway, through which the main branch of the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) transports water from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. This study identifies a number of moderate (.10 km3) to giant (up to 650 km3) mass transport deposits within the Makassar North Basin Pleistocene–Recent section. The majority of submarine landslides that formed these deposits originated from the Mahakam pro-delta, with the largest skewed to the south. We see clear evidence for ocean-current erosion, lateral transport and contourite deposition across the upper slope. This suggests that the ITF is acting as an along-slope conveyor belt, transporting sediment to the south of the delta, where rapid sedimentation rates and slope oversteepening results in recurring submarine landslides. A frequency for the .100 km3 failures is tentatively proposed at 0.5 Ma, with smaller events occurring at least every 160 ka. This area is therefore potentially prone to tsunamis generated from these submarine landslides. We identify a disparity between historical fault rupture-triggered tsunamis (located along the Palu-Koro fault zone) and the distribution of mass transport deposits in the subsurface. If these newly identified mass failures are tsunamigenic, they may represent a previously overlooked hazard in the region.

Evaluating the Geological Structure and Hydrocarbon Prospectivity of the Mid North Sea High, Central North Sea

Applied Geoscience Unit, Heriot-Watt University

2016 - 2018

Seismic section from the Mid North Sea High. From Brackenridge et al. (2020) doi.org/10.1144/petgeo2019-076

This research has been carried out in the Applied Geoscience Unit at Heriot Watt University and is funded by the OGA as part of their Frontier Basins Research Project. The project aims to assess the regional structural evolution and hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Mid North Sea High area of the UK North Sea. Research project deliverables include: seismic surfaces across the Mid North Sea High derived from the new OGA 2D survey; field and well summary sheets providing a ‘quick look’ database for explorers; revised play maps for key plays of interest across the Mid North Sea High.

The Mid North Sea High (MNSH) lies between the Northern and Southern Permian Basins and is transected to the northeast by the Central Graben. Exploration activity in and around the MNSH was primarily undertaken in the 1970s during the initial stages of North Sea hydrocarbon exploration but disappointing results led companies to focus on the more prolific surrounding basins. In the following years, occasional bursts of activity took place but none replicated the success of other areas. However, the difficulty in characterizing and determining the extent of the High itself means that the bounds of the northern and southern play fairways are poorly defined. Several recent discoveries have served to highlight this implying that a better understanding of the high’s evolution may help to identify previously unrecognized plays. A recent rejuvenation in exploration interest in the MNSH has been driven by:

The discovery of the Breagh and Cygnus Fields on the southern margin of the MNSH, located outwith their previously defined play fairways;
A better understanding of long-distance migration towards basement highs driven by recent discoveries in the Central and Viking Grabens;
The acquisition of new 2D seismic data as part of the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA)’s Frontier Basins Research Project;
The announcement of the 29th UKCS Licensing Round for which a large number of blocks over the MNSH were awarded.

This study reveals the structural complexity of the Mid North Sea High region over time and space. The MNSH is actually a series of granite-cored highs, separated by depocentres through the Devonian and Carboniferous, Permian and Mesozoic. It’s expression and control on deposition has been more limited since the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Tertiary tiling of the UK related to the opening of the Atlantic now dominated the sediment accumulation trends, and has important implications for the petroleum systems across the region.

A summary of this research, along with links to the final research products, can be viewed here.

Contourite Sands in the Gulf of Cadiz

Institute of Petroleum Engineering , Heriot-Watt University

2010 - 2014

Sediment grainsize distribution characteristics. From Brackenridge et al. (2018) doi.org/10.1111/sed.12463

This study uses an extensive data-set from a sand-rich contourite depositional system located in the Gulf of Cadiz. Newly acquired data, targeting a modern contourite sandy depositional system in the eastern Gulf of Cadiz, has been integrated with historical data, including a seismic survey over a Pliocene mixed system in the northern Gulf of Cadiz. Seismic, core and sediment analysis has been used to assess the controls on the system, and characterise the sediments. The presented study gives a new complete view of past circulation of the Mediterranean Outflow Water and contourite deposition in the eastern Gulf of Cadiz over the upper, mid and lower slope. It also identifies a mixed system in the Pliocene section of the northern Gulf of Cadiz. This allows us to make the following contributions to the field;

A new model from Quaternary evolution of the eastern sandy contourites, and Pliocene evolution of a sandy mixed system the northern Gulf of Cadiz.
A detailed examination of the sand facies and sediment of the Gulf of Cadiz and a new set of contourite sand facies models proposed.
A thorough examination of the controls on contourite formation, and their integration in a sequence stratigraphic framework.
A review of the hazards bottom currents pose to deep water exploration, and the reservoir potential of contourite sands and other facies.

The Gulf of Cadiz provides a good modern day analogue for contourite sands. They show various facies and sedimentological characteristics that are tied to depositional processes. They are also highly cyclic in nature, on a variety of time scales. If they can be positively identified in the subsurface, they have the capacity to make potential hydrocarbon reservoirs. The facies and sedimentological models presented here, and their integration into a sequence stratigraphic model will aid the positive identification of these deposits in the future.