THE INFLUENCE OF TIMESCALES IN BASIN MODELING CALCULATIONS

The five most recently published Mesozoic timescales would seem to pro vide log-normal distributions of ages for each published horizon. Howe ver, some sort of resolution limit also appears to have been reached, in that the age values for horizons from the most recently published t imescale are at the expected average values for the prior four timesca les to within resolution error claimed for the age of each horizon. It would also seem that the selection of timescale no longer has a signi ficant impact on results from basin modeling calculations, as exemplif ied by computations of excess pressure development and of cumulative o il generation history for a North Sea well done using each of the five most recent timescales. The differences in results are shown to be ne gligible. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.