The Baffin Sea, Davies Strait and Labrador Sea: Regional Tectonic and Hydrocarbon Systems — New Exploration Licenses Offshore Greenland

Jens C. Olsen, Reidun Myklebust, Flemming G. Christiansen, and Sverre Planke
TGS, Vanløse, Denmark

A wealth of new information on basin development off West Greenland has been provided from new seismic, magnetic and gravity data. New promising exploration models have been developed over the last ten years, and new data confirm hitherto poorly understood tectonic history and regional deposition models for major parts of the Labrador Sea, Davies Strait andBaffin Bay.

There is good evidence of a large system of connected deep basins with thick Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. The basins link regionally to other basins with discoveries or god shows of oil and gas. The basins west and north of Nuussuaq and Disko in the southern Baffin Bay are very deep and the location west of substantial onshore oil seeps have during 2007 attracted six oil companies now engaged in exploration of 100.000 km² of new Exploration Licenses.

The modern seismic data in the Labrador Sea indicate that opening of the Labrador Sea happened in the Jurassic or earlier, and indicate that West Greenland Kap Farvel basin area may be similar to the Canadian Orphean Basin. The coastal near areas along the SW Greenland Coast have attracted the first Exploration & Production Licenses. The licensed areas could hold large oil and gas reserves and the adjacent deepwater Labrador contain a very large number of large potential traps that could be the new exploration play ground for many years to come, - and for many Oil companies.

Several hydrocarbon discoveries in the canadian Labrador Shelf prove presence of commercial quantities of source rocks. The scale of the oils seeps onshore Greenland support commercial quantities of source rocks in the northern part of the Ungava basins and in the southern part of the Baffin. . DHI’s from modern seismic indirectly support that several other un-drilled Basins also have a substantial hydrocarbon potential.

AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Cape Town, South Africa 2008 © AAPG Search and Discovery