Pechelbronner layers

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A sample of crude oil from the Pechelbronn strata, exhibited in the Pechelbronn Petroleum Museum

The Pechelbronn layers (also Pechelbronn formation or Pechelbronn group ) are a lithostratigraphic unit of the filling of the Upper Rhine Graben and adjacent former subsidence areas. They were deposited in the Tertiary (upper Eocene , Priabonian , to the lowest Oligocene , lower Rupelian ) and thus belong to the oldest strata of the southwest German Tertiary. The partly conglomerate, partly sandy-silty, sometimes also clayey-marl-like rocks in the Upper Rhine Graben usually have a thickness of approx. 200 to 500 m, locally more than 700 m, in the adjacent areas less affected by subsidence, such as the Mainz Basin , the thickness is significantly less and is less than 50 m. The deposit environment was fluvial , limnic and also brackish- marine .

Crude oil was and is produced locally from the Pechelbronn strata . The place Pechelbronn in Alsace has the oldest oil extraction tradition in Europe. The earliest verifiable mention of the "Erdpeches" from Pechelbronn comes from the year 1498; it was used for medical applications at the time. From 1735, well before the beginning of the industrial age, oil sands were mined there and from 1879 modern drilling technology was used. In 1964, oil production in Pechelbronn was stopped. Active extraction of oil from the Pechelbronn strata still takes place today near Eich , Landau and Scheibenhardt in the Rhineland-Palatinate part of the Upper Rhine Rift. In addition, the “Stockstadt” oil field in south-west Hesse, which was actively extracted between 1952 and 1994, has been re-developed: after test drilling in the Riedstadt area and a test extraction from the “Schwarzbach I” well in Riedstadt-Goddelau, the regular extraction phase began in March 2016 of "Schwarzenbach I" at the beginning of 2018. The capacity amounted to around 250 tonnes of relatively high-quality crude oil ( english light sweet crude ) per month. Test drilling at Weingarten in North Baden started in May 2019, developed the Pechelbronn strata at a depth of approx. 900 meters and was completed in July 2019 with a “significant oil discovery”. In this region, too, crude oil was sometimes produced until the 1980s ( Leopoldshafen oil field ).

Based on experiments with heavy oil from the oil sands, the chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, who was then based in Pechelbronn, coined the name asphaltene for one of the non-volatile components of petroleum.

literature

  • Matthias C. Grimm, Martin Hottenrott: The Tertiary of the Upper Rhine Graben in the Stratigraphic Table of Germany 2002. Newsletters on Stratigraphy. Vol. 41, No. 1-3, 2005, pp. 351-358, doi : 10.1127 / 0078-0421 / 2005 / 0041-0351

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Geyer, Edgar Nitsch and Theo Simon: Geology of Baden-Württemberg. 5th edition, Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-510-65267-9 , p. 354.
  2. ↑ Peter Schäfer: Tertiary of the Mainz basin. P. 200–219 in: State Office for Geology and Mining Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.): Geology of Rhineland-Palatinate. Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-510-65215-0 , p. 205
  3. ^ Geyer, Nitsch and Simon (2011), p. 473.
  4. ↑ Michael Geiger: Landau - petroleum under the vineyards. www.heimat-pfalz.de
  5. ↑ EU project GeORG: Geopotentials of the deeper subsoil in the Upper Rhine Rift - use of raw materials
  6. ↑ Rhein Petroleum starts with test drilling. News on riedstadt.de from 23 August 2013
  7. ↑ Rhein Petroleum: Drilling work to redevelop the "Stockstadt" field in preparation. Oil and gas in Germany ( blog ), article from August 8, 2013
  8. ↑ Permanent oil production applied for - Rhein Petroleum applies for the "Schwarzbach 1" plant to the mining authority. News on riedstadt.de from March 17, 2017
  9. ^ Christian Seidenbiedel: Now oil from Hessen again. FAZ.net, January 2, 2018
  10. ↑ Hans Dieter Erlenbach: In Stockstadt oil will be produced again permanently from January. Bürstädter Zeitung, December 31, 2017
  11. ^ Company: Oil drilling in Weingarten was successful. Badische Zeitung, July 8, 2019
  12. ↑ Jean-Baptiste Boussingault: About the composition of the earth resins. Annals of Pharmacy. Vol. 23, No. 3, 1837, pp. 261-269 ( HathiTrust )