South and North Barents Triassic-Jurassic total petroleum system of the Russian offshore Arctic

Abstract

This report was prepared as part of the World Energy Project of the U.S. Geological Survey. In the project, the world was divided into 8 regions and 937 geologic provinces. The provinces have been ranked according to the discovered oil and gas volumes within each (Klett and others, 1997). Then, 76 "priority" provinces (exclusive of the U.S. and chosen for their high ranking) and 26 "boutique" provinces (exclusive of the U.S. and chosen for their anticipated petroleum richness or special regional economic importance) were selected for appraisal of oil and gas resources. The petroleum geology of these priority and boutique provinces is described in this series of reports. A detailed report containing the assessment results will be available separately, if such results are not reported herein. The priority South Barents Basin Province ranks 35th in the world, exclusive of the U.S. Even though a frontier exploratory basin, it's ranking would move to 29th if several adjacent fields that are part of the same major petroleum system are included within this greater South Barents area. The North Barents Basin is a boutique province. The purpose of the World Energy Project is to aid in assessing the quantities of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids that have the potential to be added to reserves within the next 30 years. These potential resources reside either in undiscovered fields whose sizes exceed the stated minimum-field-size cutoff value for the assessment unit (variable, but must be at least 1 million barrels of oil equivalent) or they occur as reserve growth of fields already discovered. INDEX MAP

Chapter 7 Hydrocarbon finds in the Arctic basins: discovery history, discovered resources and petroleum systems

“…Palaeozoic argillaceous carbonate source rocks (Devonian Domanik stratigraphic equivalent from the Timan -Pechora Basin), if present in the basin, might contribute gas and liquids to various reservoir rocks (Lindquist 1999). Triassic source rocks charged Lower Triassic to Upper Jurassic reservoirs in stratigraphic traps and structural closures that were modified periodically (Lindquist 1999). Overburden sequences in sub-basin depocentres contain up to 2 km of Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks.…”

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

“…Together, these fields contain >90 percent of the recoverable petroleum in the East Barents Basin Province as of 2007, of which the Shtokmanovskoye field is the largest (IHS Energy Group, 2007). Natural gas and two oil shows have been reported in Cretaceous rocks on the Ludlov Saddle and in the South Barents Basin (Lindquist, 1999a).…”

“…During the early Proterozoic, the East European Platform was accreted to the Archean Baltic Shield (Lindquist, 1999a). Late Proterozoic (Riphean) rifting on this platform resulted in separation of some microcontinents and their drifting into the pre-Ural Ocean.…”

“…Lower and Middle Triassic rocks are commonly overpressured (Semenovich and Nazaruk, 1992;Lindquist, 1999a), and Triassic mudstone provides good local seals (Semenovich and Nazaruk, 1992;Oknova, 1993;Zakharov and Kulibakina, 1998). Triassic clinoforms prograding southeastward to northwestward have been observed on seismic profiles at several stratigraphic intervals in the southwestern part of the East Barents Basins.…”

“…This collisional event, known as the Timanide orogeny, resulted in the formation of the northwest-trending Kanin-Timan Ridge and the Kola-Kanin Monocline. The East European Platform and the Baltic Shield continuously drifted northward from equatorial latitudes after Cambrian time (Ustritskiy, 1991;Lindquist, 1999a).…”