History of Research

CASP’s origins in 1975 are in the northern part of this region, on the Barents shelf, the gateway to the Arctic. Since then our research and expertise in the North Atlantic region has continued to evolve and expand. In addition to Spitsbergen, extensive fieldwork has been undertaken in East Greenland; other field areas include the Faroes, Norway, the United Kingdom, Portugal, the Canary Islands, Senegambia and Cabo Verde. Our work in the North Atlantic benefits from the wider perspective of projects conducted in Arctic Canada and Arctic Russia. It also forms the main springboard for our research aiding the energy transition.

Key Geological Topics Covered

Multiple topics have been covered in this core area for CASP research. They relate to improving our understanding of its tectonic evolution, stratigraphic development, hydrocarbon systems and, more recently, carbon storage potential. Source-to-sink and integrated biostratigraphic studies form important additional components. As elsewhere, CASP research continues to combine multidisciplinary studies of regions and individual sedimentary basins, based on a combination of original fieldwork, core store visits, analytical studies, and critical synthesis of data and literature. Active super-regional and generic studies include the impact of flood basalts on hydrocarbon systems and the characterisation of mudrock seals in CO₂ storage systems. Details of these and other, more geographically restricted, research areas can be found on our East Greenland and Mid-Norway, SE Greenland and Faroe-Shetland Islands, Western Barents Shelf and Southern North Sea sub-region pages.