Oil and Gas Potential of Yukon Flats, Alaska

Richard G. Stanley
U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed an assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in Yukon Flats, a remote, sparsely inhabited lowland located along the Yukon River in east-central Alaska, about 150 kilometers northeast of Fairbanks. The USGS assessed an area of about 35,000 square kilometers, within which the major landowners are the Federal government, the State of Alaska, and native corporations and villages. This effort provides a scientifically based estimate of petroleum potential at a time when Federal, State, and local governmental agencies, along with private companies and other groups, are considering policy alternatives regarding land use, environmental concerns, and energy needs.

No petroleum production has been obtained from Yukon Flats. One exploratory well has been drilled, a coalbed methane test at Fort Yukon that found small quantities of natural gas. Available geological, geophysical, and geochemical evidence indicates the probable existence of petroleum accumulations in mildly deformed, nonmarine strata of Cenozoic (and perhaps Mesozoic) age.

This new USGS assessment of Yukon Flats is based on data derived from field work, new gravity and magnetic studies, seismic reprocessing and reinterpretation, thermal modeling, laboratory analyses of potential source rocks (mainly Tertiary and Mesozoic coal, mudstone, and shale), and petrologic studies of potential reservoirs (mainly Tertiary, and perhaps Mesozoic, siliciclastic sandstone and conglomerate). We report estimates of the technically recoverable volumes of undiscovered petroleum (oil, gas, and natural gas liquids) in conventional accumulations that have the potential to be added to reserves during a 30-year forecast span.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90039©2005 AAPG Calgary, Alberta, June 16-19, 2005