Hydrocarbon Pools of the Trout Plain, Northwest Territories

Ed Janicki
Northwest Territories Geoscience Office, Yellowknife, NT

The Trout Plain comprises the southwestern portion of the Great Slave Plain exploration region. Gas reserves are estimated at 1016 10⁶ m³ (36 Bcf) for seven gas discoveries made over the period 1959 to 1989. Other discoveries have recently been made, but the data will remain confidential pending aboriginal land claim settlements. Three of the seven discoveries are profiled on this poster.

Much of the exploration effort in the Trout Plain has been focused on drilling along the edge of the Arrowhead Salient, which lies along the northern margin of the Middle Devonian Slave Point Formation carbonate platform. Trapping for the carbonates is interpreted to be mainly stratigraphic as a result of enhanced porosity in carbonates along the platform edge.

Suncor Netla C07-6050-12245 was drilled in 1961. The reservoir occurs in a 14-metre thick zone of light grey, medium-grained siliceous limestone (mudstone and wackestone).

HB Pan Am South Island River M41-6010-12100 is located along the eastern edge of the Arrowhead Salient close to the British Columbia border. The pay zone of roughly six metres is at the top of a section of approximately 100 metres of medium to coarsely crystalline, white dolomite.

One discovery has been in channel sandstones of the Early Cretaceous. Shell et al Arrowhead B41-6040-12245 was drilled in 1989 and has gas reserves in the Early Cretaceous Chinkeh Formation sandstone. The main pay zone consists of six metres of fine to medium-grained, massive quartz arenite.

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