Abstract
In recent years, both the petroleum industry and governmentresearch institutions have shown renewed interest in the petroleum potential of the High Arctic. At the same time, arange of activities are taking place, aimed at defining national borders in the Arctic Ocean following ratification of article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Parallel to the general upsurge in data acquisition activities, the United States Geological Survey has carried out a Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal (CARA), which for North-East Greenland was published in 2007. This assessment indicated that a significant petroleum exploration potential exists on the North-East Greenland shelf, in particular in the Danmarkshavn Basin and the North Danmarkshavn Salt Province (Fig. 1). The estimated potential amounts to 31 billion barrels of oil equivalents, principally in the form of natural gas. For comparison, this roughly corresponds to one third of the original reserve of the North Sea basins. The geology of the Danmarkshavn Basin and offshore areas farther to the north is only known in broad outline, since no wells have been drilled and only reconnaissance geophysical data are available. Moreover, the extensive ice cover and the overall hostile climate of the region pose significant logistical and technical challenges to data acquisition. Clearly, this emphasises the importance of analogue studies based on the much better known geology of the onshore basins in East and North-East Greenland. In 2007/2008, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) launched a major petroleum industry-sponsored project with the objective of updating and expanding our current understanding of the petroleum geology of East and North-East Greenland. The projectis planned to continue for the next four to five years, and includes compilation of relevant existing data in the form of a geographic information system (GIS) product, supple-mented by new data obtained from shallow core drilling and new field work. Below we give a brief overview of a range of field activities that took place in East and North-East Greenland in the summer of 2008.
Highlights
In recent years, both the petroleum industry and government research institutions have shown renewed interest in the petroleum potential of the High Arctic
The lower boundary of the Katedralen Member is well known from the Ugleelv region and the west side of Hurry Inlet, where few, condensed beds of mudstone and finegrained sandstone separate the Fossilbjerget and Hareelv Formations
Petroleum source rocks are known to be present in East and North-East Greenland in a number of stratigraphic intervals ranging in age from Middle Devonian to Upper Jurassic, whereas source rocks in younger units still remain to be demonstrated
Summary
Hiatus/condensed Mass flow sandstone Source rock stratigraphy and age of the Hareelv Formation and lateral, contemporaneous deposits (Fig. 2). The lower boundary of the Katedralen Member is well known from the Ugleelv region and the west side of Hurry Inlet, where few, condensed beds of mudstone and finegrained sandstone separate the Fossilbjerget and Hareelv Formations. These beds are age equivalent to the Olympen Formation in central to northern Jamethe most prolific source rock in the north Atlantic region son Land (P. athleta to C. densiplicatum Chronozones of Late (Fig. 2). The Katedralen Member (Hare- Jameson Land Basin at the same time as the Katedralen elv Formation) from 10.08 to 233.8 m consists of alternating Member mud was deposited in the easternmost, apparently sandstone and shale units; the lower boundary of the mem- much deeper basin (Surlyk 2003). An extensive analytical programme to evaluate source and reservoir rock properties to establish a high-resolution dinoflagellate cyst and macrofossil biostratigraphic zonation, and assess sedimentological, diagenetic and sequence stratigraphic aspects of the penetrated succession is in progress
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