Max Casson

Max joins NARG after attaining a BSc in Geological Sciences from the University of Leeds and an MSc in Petroleum Geosciences, here at the University of Manchester. He brings industry experience to the project after working in regional studies of the Gulf of Mexico and US North Atlantic margin at Getech Group and near-field exploration of the East Shetland Platform, UK North Sea at J.X. Nippon during his MSc.

His project expands NARG’s current area of study further south along the African Atlantic margin into the Central Atlantic region currently of high exploration activity in the oil industry. Max’s task will involve building a regional tectono-stratigraphic framework integrating well data from the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and exploration wells drilled across Senegal and offshore Suriname, field work completed on Maio, Cape Verde and at Cap du Naze, Senegal, whilst integrating this with 2D/3D seimsic data. The aim is to improve the stratigraphic resolution along the margin, linking with work completed in Morocco, to better predict the timing and nature of clastic delivery and source rock development.

Through Max's first year of his PhD, he collected over 500 new samples from DSDP wells, completed a 1-month field season on Maio, 10-days field work at Cap du Naze, and re-sampled 10 exploration wells at Petrosen's office in Dakar. This extension data acquisition phase will be followed by an integrated technical analysis, including sedimentology, biostratigraphy and organic geochemistry. Once this new analysis is complete, Max will combine this with previous work in the Central Atlantic.

The PhD is supervised by Prof. Jonathan Redfern, Prof. Mads Huuse, Dr. Luc Bulot and is working in close collaboration with Jason Jeremiah.