Gipsdalen Gp

Name Cutbill and Challinor (1965) introduced the term Gipsdalen Group for a suite of rocks of mid-Carboniferous to early Permian age. The group is widely exposed on Svalbard, with its type area in central Spitsbergen. The group’s overall geological development is well known onshore, both on Spitsbergen itself (e.g. Steel & Worsley 1984; Dallmann et al. 1999) and on Bjørnøya on the Stappen High (Worsley et al. 2001). The Gipsdalen Group is here extended to cover the offshore mid-Carboniferous to early Permian succession in the southern Norwegian Barents Sea and is there dominated by red-coloured siliciclastics and warm-water, often dolomitised carbonates – also with the significant presence of evaporites and the halite diapirs in the Nordkapp Basin. Wells 7121/1-1R, 7124/3-1 and 7226/11-1 from the margins of the Loppa High and the Bjarmeland Platform record deposition in deeper marine settings than seen onshore. The formational scheme proposed herein is relatively broad and reflects three, easily recognised, highly diachronous stages of development starting w