Exploration History and Future Prospects of the U.S. Atlantic Margin

Abstract

The U.S. Atlantic continental margin contains four basins: The Georges Bank basin, the Baltimore Canyon Trough, the Carolina Trough, and the Blake Plateau basin. For the purposes of this paper, the Southeast Georgia Embayment and Bahamas Platform are included with the Blake Plateau basin, to which they are stratigraphically related. The shelves of all but the Carolina Trough have been tested to varying extents; the slopes have been tested only minimally. The tests have included 51 wells at a cost of over two billion dollars. No commercial discoveries have been reported. Reservoir rock is ubiquitous and of good quality throughout the predominantly clastic Cretaceous sections of the Georges Bank basin, Baltimore Canyon Trough, Southeast Georgia Embayment, and, by inference, in the Carolina Trough. Source rock is of fair-to-good quality, although gas-prone. Source quality is poor in older rocks drilled on the shelf and encountered in Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) holes in deep water. The predominantly carbonate Blake Plateau rocks have not been drilled, but drilling of similar, coeval facies in the Bahamas Platform and Cuba has yielded only a little oil in Cuba. Source quality was apparently not reported in these wells drilled in the 1950s and 1960s. In spite of the disappointing results, many plays remain untested. These are generally in deep water or at greater depths than previously drilled, and many are likely to produce only deep gas. Renewal of exploration interest in the Atlantic outer continental shelf (OCS) probably awaits significantly higher oil and gas prices, especially gas. End_Page 269------------------------