Chapter 44 Geology and petroleum potential of the Lincoln Sea Basin, offshore North Greenland

Abstract

A seismic refraction line crossing the Lincoln Sea was acquired in 2006. It proves the existence of a deep sedimentary basin underlying the Lincoln Sea. This basin appears to be comparable in width and depth to the Sverdrup Basin of the Canadian Arctic Islands. The stratigraphy of the Lincoln Sea Basin is modelled in analogy to the Sverdrup Basin and the Central Spitsbergen Basin, two basins between which the Lincoln Sea intervened before the onset of seafloor spreading in the Eurasian Basin. The refraction data indicates that the Lincoln Sea Basin is capped by a kilometre-thick, low-velocity layer, which is taken to indicate an uplift history similar to, or even more favourable than, the fairway part of the Sverdrup Basin. Tectonic activity in the Palaeogene is likely to constitute the major basin scale risk. We conclude that the Lincoln Sea Basin is likely to be petroliferous and contains risked resources on the order of 1 Â 10 9 barrels of oil, to which comes an equivalent amount of (associated and nonassociated) gas.

Erosion-driven vertical motions of the circum Arctic: Comparative analysis of modern topography

“…The gravity data indeed shows a strong anomaly in the Lincoln Sea (Figure 19). Seismic studies and gravity modelling (Jackson and Dahl-Jensen, 2010;Sørensen et al, 2011) demonstrate that the sediments are of at least two different depositional episodes and that the younger sediments, probably associated with glacial erosion, were accumulated on the northern edge of that basin and do not exceed 5 km in thickness. Figure 20 presents the results of two numerical experiments in which the sediment succession of the Lincoln Sea was separated into two parts.…”

Initial Opening of the Eurasian Basin, Arctic Ocean

“…While the Eurekan N-S shortening is well-documented in Ellesmere Island, North Greenland and western Svalbard, the structural configuration north of Greenland remain unresolved. The North Greenland transform margin province includes sedimentary basins under the Wandel Sea and the Lincoln Sea (Sørensen et al, 2011). Structural analyses within different areas of the Wandel Hav Mobile Belt of northeast Greenland suggest that the main compressive deformation was caused by a comparable dextral transpressive mechanism.…”

Chapter 8 US Geological Survey Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal (CARA): introduction and summary of organization and methods

“…In his paper on western Greenland, Baffin Bay and eastern Canada, Schenk (2011a) presents the basic geological model for assessment of an area with high potential and strong industry interest, but also relatively sparse subsurface data and great risk. In their treatment of northern Greenland, Sørensen et al (2011) confront the uncertainty in one of the least known areas of the Arctic using little information beyond general concepts of tectonic evolution and sparse geophysical data. Similarly, Moore et al (2011a), in an interesting exercise in tectonic reconstruction and reasoning by analogy, introduce the geological basis for assessment of the Lomonosov Ridge, one of the remotest places in the Arctic.…”