Petroleum Systems in "Rift" Basins

Abstract

The 34th GCSSEPM Foundation Bob F. Perkins Research Conference on Petroleum Systems in "Rift" Basins grew out of a joint effort by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to bring together knowledgeable geologists, geophysicists, and resource managers from federal and state agencies at a series of workshops to examine the oil and natural gas resource potential of the Mesozoic synrift basins in the Atlantic coastal states and the adjacent offshore areas. These workshops were convened in preparation for a proposed Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease sale scheduled for 2011 in the Mid-Atlantic planning area, focused on the OCS area offshore Virginia that was announced as part of the BOEM 2007-2012 Five-Year Leasing Plan in February, 2006 (BOEM, 2006. The area of the draft proposed program initially included the previously identified Norfolk Mesozoic rift basin, which was later removed at the request of the governor of Virginia to create a 50-mile shore buffer from future exploration activities (BOEM, 2008(BOEM, , 2010.The Atlantic OCS planning areas have not been the focus of seismic acquisition since 1988, or drilling since 1984 (BOEM, 2012). Consequently, at the time of the announcement in 2006, very few of the federal or state geoscientists and resource managers working the onshore, adjacent state waters, or Atlantic OCS had personal experience in the processes necessary to address the scientific requirements for successful oil and gas exploration in these frontier areas. In addition, in the 24 years since the last US Atlantic OCS drilling, new exploration activity in the offshore Atlantic margin basins of Africa and South America had resulted in amazingly prolific oil and gas discoveriespotential analogs that were factored into new Atlantic OCS petroleum resource assessments (Post et al., 2012; BOEM, 2012 BOEM, , 2014.Consequently, beginning in 2008, the USGS sponsored three regional workshops to review the known geological concepts and available data of the sedimentary basins in the Atlantic coastal states and adjacent offshore areas. The first two workshops (May, 2008 and March, 2009) were hosted by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy at their offices in Charlottesville, VA, and addressed the energy resource potential of the Mid-Atlantic (NC, VA, MD, and DE) and South Atlantic (VA, NC, SC, and FL), respectively (Lassetter, 2009). The third workshop (October, 2010) was hosted by the New Jersey Geological Survey at their offices in Trenton, NJ, and addressed the energy resource potential of the North Atlantic area (DE, PA, NJ, CT, MA, and ME). The USGS used the results from these meetings and the contacts established to begin its oil and natural gas resource assessment of the Mesozoic synrift basins of the Atlantic coastal states and state waters completed in late 2011 (Milici et al., 2012; Coleman et al., 2015, this volume).