East Barents Basin and Admiralty High Composite Tectono-Sedimentary Elements, Barents Sea

Abstract

Abstract The East Barents Sea (E Barents Sea) includes two major tectonic elements, the East Barents Basin (EB Basin) and the Admiralty High, which are, in the context of the volume, characterized as composite tectono-sedimentary elements. Whereas they share some stratigraphy, their early history may differ. The EB Basin is a dominant structural feature of the Barents Shelf, and one of the largest and deepest sedimentary basins in the Arctic. Admiralty High rims the EB Basin in the east. The advance in understanding the E Barents Sea geology was achieved during 1980s and 1990s mainly due to a significant amount of multichannel reflection seismic data and a number of drilled deep exploration wells. These wells tested many large anticlinal structures and made several large gas discoveries including a giant Shtokman gas and gas condensate accumulation. In the following decades, many important geological results were published in the international and Russian literature. In this chapter we provide a summary of the geology and petroleum geology of the E Barents Sea based on published results and public-domain geological reports.