The Continental Margin Off Northern Baffin Bay: Characterization of the Melville Bay Graben and First Results of Maturity Modeling

Kai Berglar

In summer 2010, during the multidisciplinary marine geoscientific expedition ARK-XXV/3, gravity and heat flow data, sediment cores and multichannel seismic data (MCS) with a total length of 4000 km have been acquired in Greenland territorial waters of the central and northern Baffin Bay. Interpretation of these data gives new insight into the evolution of Baffin Bay, the nature of the West Greenland continental margin, the continent-ocean transition and the evolution of sedimentary basins. The data show that the block-faulted continental passive margin of northwest Greenland is characterized by sediment filled rift basins. The biggest basin is the Melville Bay Graben in the north, bounded by the Melville Bay Fault to the east and by the Melville High to the west. It is filled by sediments of up to 13 km thickness representing the complete rift cycle. The sediments are overlying continental basement of Precambrian age. On some of the new acquired MCS lines a transition zone between the oceanic crust and the block-faulted continental margin is present west of the Melville Bay. Using heat flow measurements, geochemical data from sediment cores, available well data and results from seismic interpretation of both the ARK-XXV/3 data and public released commercial data sets we modeled pseudo-wells in the sediment-filled rift basins overlying continental crust. Based on sediment thickness data the results of 1D-maturity models are extrapolated to give a first estimation of hydrocarbon maturity in sedimentary basins on the Melville Bay shelf.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90177©3P Arctic, Polar Petroleum Potential Conference & Exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, October 15-18, 2013