Geological Evolution of Southern Novaya Zemlya, Arctic Russia, and Its Implications for Adjacent Hydrocarbon Basins

Robert A. Scott¹, James P. Howard², Li Guo², Irene Gomez-Perez², Roman Schekoldin³, Vicky Pease⁴, David G. Gee⁵, Henning O. Lorenz⁵, Alexander Gubanov⁵, Olga Bogolepova⁵, Evgeny Korago⁶, and Galina Kovaleva^6
1 University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
² CASP, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
³ St. Petersburg State Mining Institute, St Petersburg, Russia
⁴ Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
⁵ Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
⁶ VNIIOkeangeologiya, St Petersburg, Russia

The Novaya Zemlya archipelago is surrounded by some of the most important proven and potential hydrocarbon provinces in the Arctic (Barents Sea, Timan-Pechora, West Siberia, Kara Sea). Exposures of Precambrian through Early Triassic strata on Novaya Zemlya provide vital information with which to constrain the geological evolution of adjacent basins. However, owing to the use of the island for nuclear testing and waste disposal, direct access for western geologists has been virtually impossible. Here we present preliminary results from the first western-funded geological research expedition to the islands since the 1930s.

The overall structure of southern Novaya Zemlya is dominated by a broad NW-SE trending anticline in which Neoproterozoic strata form the core, bounded on each limb by a near-continuous Palaeozoic succession. Although Novaya Zemlya is assumed to be a component part of the Uralian Orogen, the deformation present in the archipelago is considered by most authors to be of latest Triassic-earliest Jurassic (Early ‘Cimmerian') age, significantly later than the Late Palaeozoic deformation further south in the Urals, and substantially after the onset of sedimentation in all the adjacent basins.

Neoproterozoic distal turbidites in southern Novaya Zemlya are overlain with angular unconformity by Early Ordovician clastic sediments. By Mid to Late Ordovician time, the succession is dominated by shallow marine carbonates interbedded with mudrocks. Limestone then dominates the succession through Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous time, with black shale units at several levels, particularly within the Devonian. Permian clastic deposits complete the preserved succession.

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