Geology and Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the East Barents Basins Province and the Novaya Zemlya Basins and Admiralty Arch Province, 2008

Assessment of undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources of the Barents Sea area, 2021

“…In the western part of the Barents Sea area, source rocks are in the thermal windows for oil and gas generation. Triassic marine shales are hundreds of meters of thick and have total organic carbon (TOC) values up to 12 weight percent, hydrogen index values up to 600 milligrams hydrocarbon per gram of TOC, making them the most viable source rocks in the east (Klett, 2017). Jurassic organic-rich shales are interpreted as the most viable source rocks in the western part of the Barents Sea area (Doré, 1995;Ohm and others, 2008).…”

“…1). The tectonic evolution of the Barents Sea area reflects the multiphase deformation of a structurally and spatially heterogeneous basement (Klitzke and others, 2015;others, 2016, 2018;Klett, 2017;Müller and others, 2019). Regional extension in the Devonian reactivated preexisting basement faults, producing a series of horsts and grabens that filled with up to 6 kilometers of synrift sediment.…”

“…Contractional deformation in Novaya Zemlya formed a series of broad folds including anticlines that became important traps for oil and gas, particularly in what are now the Barents basin and Kolguyev terrace. Thermal subsidence in the Cretaceous led to accommodation space that was filled by the westward progradation of several clastic sequences including fluvial to deep marine sandstone reservoirs (Klett, 2017). From the Late Cretaceous through the Oligocene, up to 3 kilometers of uplift and erosion in the western part of the Barents Sea area may have caused loss or remigration of oil and gas (Müller and others, 2019).…”