Arctic Petroleum Geology

The vast Arctic region contains nine proven petroleum provinces with giant resources but over half of the sedimentary basins are completely undrilled, making the region the last major frontier for conventional oil and gas exploration. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the geology and the petroleum potential of the Arctic. Nine papers offer a circum-Arctic perspective on the Phanerozoic tectonic and palaeogeographic evolution, the currently recognized sedimentary basins, the gravity and magnetic fields and, perhaps most importantly, the petroleum resources and yet-to-find potential of the basins. The remaining 41 papers provide data-rich, geological and geophysical analyses and individual oil and gas assessments of specific basins throughout the Arctic. These detailed and well illustrated studies cover the continental areas of Laurentia, Baltica and Siberia and the Arctic Ocean. Of special interest are the 13 papers providing new data and interpretations on the extensive, little known, but promising, basins of Russia.
A DVD is provided inside the back of the book, that contains PDFs of all papers plus all related Supplementary Publications.
Geology and petroleum potential of the West Greenland–East Canada Province
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Published:January 01, 2011
Abstract
The US Geological Survey (USGS) assessed the potential for undiscovered oil and gas resources of the West Greenland–East Canada Province as part of the USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal programme. The province lies in the offshore area between western Greenland and eastern Canada and includes Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Lancaster Sound and Nares Strait west of and including part of Kane Basin. A series of major tectonic events led to the formation of several distinct structural domains that are the geological basis for defining five assessment units (AU) in the province, all of which are within the Mesozoic–Cenozoic Composite Petroleum System. Potential petroleum source rocks include strata of Ordovician, Lower and Upper Cretaceous, and Palaeogene ages. The five AUs defined for this study – the Eurekan Structures AU, NW Greenland Rifted Margin AU, NE Canada Rifted Margin AU, Baffin Bay Basin AU and the Greater Ungava Fault Zone AU – encompass the entire province and were assessed for undiscovered technically recoverable resources. The mean volumes of undiscovered resources for the West Greenland–East Canada Province are 10.7×109 barrels of oil, 75×1012 cubic feet of gas, and 1.7×109 barrels of natural gas liquids. For the part of the province that is north of the Arctic Circle, the estimated mean volumes of these undiscovered resources are 7.3×109 barrels of oil, 52×1012 cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.1×109 barrels of natural gas liquids.
Supplementary Appendices 1–5 are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18476