The Exploration Potential of Offshore Northwest Korea (P.D.R.K.)

CUNNINGHAM, PAT, and DAVID BISHOPP, Oryx U.K. Energy Company, Uxbridge, U.K.

Recent political changes have demonstrated that previously taboo countries are now becoming fair game for western explorationists. Numerous areas or basins that have not been the focus of high technology--Technologically Attenuated Basins (TABs)--offer a new challenge for the new venture groups of E & P companies. Most recently the USSR together with other Eastern European countries continue to be a source of technical interest and frustration. The People's Democratic Republic of Korea, North Korea, possibly the most isolated of the Communist block, contains several TABs where there has been minimal exploration. One such TAB is West Korea Bay, which covers an area of 25,000 sq km containing at least one major Tertiary basin. The tectonic evolution of the Tertiary basin is similar o the intracratonic Chinese basins with significant differences, notably the Songnim and Daebo orogenies (Middle Triassic to Upper Jurassic and Jurassic to middle Cretaceous) that resulted in extensive igneous activity, folding, and thrust faulting, followed by an extensional stress regime during the Mesozoic and Cainozoic.

Very few wells have been drilled in West Korea Bay in the past decade (one per 2500 sq km). Though commercially unsuccessful, the wells have proven the existence of oil, mature source rocks, and reservoirs (Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Oligo-Miocene). Structural plays such as rotated Jurassic and Cretaceous fault blocks predominate, but there is also potential for higher risk stratigraphic potential in the Jurassic and Tertiary, with expected field size distributions in the 20-180 MMBOR range.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91004 © 1991 AAPG Annual Convention Dallas, Texas, April 7-10, 1991 (2009)