Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the West Greenland-East Canada Province

Christopher J. Schenk
US Geological Survey, Denver, CO.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently assessed the potential for undiscovered oil and gas resources of the West Greenland-East Canada Province as part of the USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal program. The province lies in the offshore area between western Greenland and eastern Canada and includes Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Lancaster Sound, and Nares Strait west of and including part of Kane Basin. A series of major tectonic events led to the formation of several distinct structural domains that are the geologic basis for defining five assessment units (AU) in the province, all of which are within the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Composite Total Petroleum System (TPS). Potential petroleum source rocks within the composite TPS include strata of Ordovician, Lower and Upper Cretaceous, and Paleogene ages. The five AUs defined for this study are the Eurekan Structures AU, Northwest Greenland Rifted Margin AU, Northeast Canada Rifted Margin AU, Baffin Bay Basin AU, and the Greater Ungava Fault Zone AU. They encompass the entire province and were assessed for undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. The mean volumes of undiscovered resources for the West Greenland-East Canada Province are 10.7 billion barrels of oil, 75 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 1.7 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. For the part of the province that is north of the Arctic Circle, the estimated mean volumes of these undiscovered resources are 7.3 billion barrels of oil, 52 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.1 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids.

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90096©2009 AAPG 3-P Arctic Conference and Exhibition, Moscow, Russia