About us

HM Research Associates was formed in 2000 by Andy Morton and Claire Hallsworth after many years experience at the British Geological Survey undertaking provenance and correlation studies on clastic successions on hydrocarbon reservoir sandstones on the NW European margin. HM Research now carries out projects on hydrocarbon basins around the world.

Heavy minerals are particularly sensitive indicators of sediment provenance and therefore provide a high-resolution tool for subdividing and correlating clastic successions on the basis of changes in sediment provenance and transport history. The success of the technique lies in the ability to discriminate mineralogical changes resulting from changes in sediment provenance and transport history from those resulting from changes in depositional conditions or diagenesis. Heavy mineral stratigraphy therefore directly filters out 'noise' caused by differences in depositional facies and post depositional alteration unlike many other alternative mineralogical or chemical methods.