Abstract: Petroleum Frontier Areas on Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf

John Schlee, R. E. Mattick, William P. Dillon

The three areas of petroleum potential on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are the Georges Bank basin, the Baltimore Canyon Trough, and the Southeast Georgia embayment. The Georges Bank basin contains as much as 8 km of presumed Jurassic and Cretaceous marine and nonmarine sedimentary rocks in a broad northeast-trending basin built over a block-faulted basement. The Baltimore Canyon area has a similar setting but contains at least 14 km of sediment in a north-trending elongated trough marked by a pronounced hinge zone under the inner shelf and a discontinuous zone of reef(?) complexes under the upper slope. The Southeast Georgia embayment is a broad east-plunging depression containing as much as 3 km (shelf-edge boundary) of presumed Jurassic and younger carbona e and fine-grained clastic rocks opening seaward to a broad trough under the Blake Plateau.

Under Georges Bank, potential hydrocarbon traps are drape structures above the faulted basement, faults, carbonate buildups, facies changes, and pinchouts; salt diapirs may be present on the eastern end of the bank. Although there may be drape structures over faulted basement blocks in the Baltimore Canyon Trough, these structures would be too deep to be considered potential hydrocarbon traps. Results of Lease Sale 40 indicate that the principal targets in the Baltimore Canyon Trough are sedimentary rocks associated with a circular intrusion 10 km across (100 km from the New Jersey coast) and sediments adjacent to a series of magnetic highs along the shelf edge. On the basis of the COST B-2 well drilled off New Jersey, a thick section of Lower Cretaceous sandstone interbedded with sha e appears likely as a reservoir in the Baltimore Canyon Trough. Traps in the Southeast Georgia embayment are probably stratigraphic pinchouts, structural highs with small closure, and buried reefs in the southern part.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90968©1977 AAPG-SEPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, Washington, DC