conferred by The European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE)
- 2017
- The Norman Falcon Award 2017 is presented to:
Marco Roveri and his co-authors R. Gennari, S. Lugli, V. Manzi, N. Minelli, M. Reghizzi, A. Riva, M. E. Rossi and B. C. Schreiber
For their paper ´The Messinian salinity crisis: open problems and possible implications for Mediterranean petroleum systems´, published in Petroleum Geoscience, volume 22, issue 4, November 2016, pp. 283-290.
Marco Roveri and co-authors review the Messinian salinity crisis (MSC) and discuss unsolved problems and possible implications for Mediterranean petroleum systems. The paper explains and then challenges the accepted paradigm of a ‘shallow-water deep-basin’ model, which implies high-amplitude oscillations (greater than 1500 m) in the Mediterranean sea-level up to the point of its desiccation. By combining chronostratigraphic observations with global sea level curves and solar insolation data, the authors show that an alternative, deep-water, non-desiccated scenario of the MSC is not only possible but, in fact, a more credible model. This in turn has strong implications for the assessment of petroleum systems in the Mediterranean and adjoining areas (e.g. the Black Sea Basin), which are developed by the authors as an improved petroleum systems model for Messinian source rocks and hydrocarbon accumulations.
Paris, 12 June 2017
