Provenance of Ben Nevis/Avalon Formation Reservoir Sandstones, White Rose Field, Grand Banks, Newfoundland 

Angie Dearin, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Dept of Earth Sciences, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, [email protected]

The White Rose oil field was discovered in 1984.  It is located in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin approximately 350 km east of St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.  The White Rose field resides in a structurally complex faulted area and contains both oil and gas.  The oil pool covers approximately 40km²  and contains an estimated 200-250 million barrels of recoverable oil. The source rock is the Kimmeridgian-age marine shale of the Egret Member of the Rankin Formation.  Reservoir rock is from the Aptian-age Ben Nevis/Avalon Formation sandstone, with variable thicknesses up to 300m. The conformably overlying siltstones and calcareous shales of the Nautilus Formation provide the regional seal.

The main objective of this project is to evaluate and understand the provenance of the Ben Nevis/Avalon Formation sandstones within the White Rose Field.  This study will determine the change of provenance with time, within (and adjacent to) selected reservoir intervals; as well as how provenance and associated sediment transport is reflected in lateral trends.  Questions to be considered are whether the sediments have been derived from more than one source area, how the source(s) may have evolved through time, and whether the sands were deposited directly, or if they were redeposited from previously deposited sediment. Clearly, a depositional model must be adopted as a framework for the analysis of provenance. On the other hand, it is hoped that provenance analyses (mineralogical and geochemical data) may further constrain existing chronostratigraphic correlations.