ABSTRACT: The West Greenland Shelf--A Reemerging Basin with Both Shallow and Deep Water Potential

CHALMERS, JAMES A., KIRSTEN H. LAURSEN, and THOMAS G. OTTESEN, Geological Survey of Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark

Offshore West Greenland is reemerging as a potential petroleum province. Reinterpretation of industry seismic data and a reprocessed academic survey from the 1970s, and new data acquired in 1990, have led to a more optimistic view of the petroleum potential of the region than that which prevailed when exploration was abandoned at the end of the 1970s. Furthermore, the model for the opening of the Labrador Sea that was current throughout the 1980s is having to be revised. Results can be summarized as follows:

1. It can now be seen that four of the five wells that were drilled were situated on structures that never could have trapped hydrocarbons. Even the structure penetrated by the fifth well was flawed.
2. The extent and thickness of syn-rift sequences are greater than previously realized. These sequences, which in many places attain a total thickness of more than 3 km, occur in tilted fault blocks overlain unconformably by a thick cover of post-rift sequences. North of 64 degrees N, rifting had largely died out in latest Cretaceous time, while south of this rifting, here linked to sea floor spreading, continued until the end of the Paleocene. Compressional structures have also been noted in the earlier sequences, adding to the spectrum of trap types that occur in the area. Information on maturity and thermal gradients from the five wells indicates that the greater part of the succession older than Paleocene must lie in the oil window.
3. Block-faulted continental crust overlain by syn- and post-rift sequences continues at least 100 km west of the foot of the continental slope, well into the area until recently considered to be underlain by oceanic crust. The oldest linear magnetic anomaly in the inner Labrador Sea is now believed to be 27, and not 33 as previously postulated. Thus an area of more than 50,000 sq. kilometers with water depths between 700 and 2000 m can been added to the prospective area offshore West Greenland.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91012©1992 AAPG Annual Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June 22-25, 1992 (2009)