Inter-continental Correlation of Exploration Data: Filling Knowledge Gaps across the Continent Ocean Boundary

Bjørn Martinsen

Frontier exploration typically is challenged by gaps in our regional geological understanding, and thus an incomplete grasp of the hydrocarbon systems. Here we present examples of a new plate reconstruction of the NE Atlantic. In the reconstruction basins and highs can be followed from the Barents Sea to Rockall. For example the Bjørnøya and Danmarkshavn Basins (Greenland); the Hammerfest, Tromsø, Thetis (Greenland) and Lofoten Basins link up, or at least align. Farther south the Vøring Margional High, continues into the Jan Mayen Ridge, and aligns with highs under the Faroe Islands, and towards the Rockall system. In these cases the continetal fit allow us to transfer exploration relevant data across broken margins. For examples, sea floor sampling (TGS/VBPR) recording live oil systems, reservoir and source rocks on the Jan Mayen Ridge, and outer Northeast Greenland continental margin, can be extrapolated onto Norwegian continental shelf, where they provided information regarding source rocks, maturation and reservoirs. Secondly reconstructions allow us to populate basin models with data borrowed from the opposite margins. For example one can play a what-if-game replacing the (generally unknown) sub-Turonian geology of the basalt covered Norwegian Sea margin with plays similar to the exhumed traps on East Greenland, and then test for risk-controlling factors. Likewise, we can play what-if games for the Jan Mayen microcontinent, testing the effect of lateral heat flow from break up, into the largely unknown Mesozoic sections. The approach can also be applied to the exhumed oil fields in central East Greenland, testing how these oil traps, now exposed in high mountains, developed hydrocarbons and then rose to become mountains.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90177©3P Arctic, Polar Petroleum Potential Conference & Exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, October 15-18, 2013