Offshore staff
OSLO, Norway – Applied Petroleum Technology (APT) has identified a new area potentially prospective for hydrocarbons offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.
The company’s evaluation of the Southern Grand Banks petroleum system has identified source rocks in the Lower Jurassic and a genetically related set of oil shows.
APT sampled and analyzed drill cuttings from 13 wells drilled in the region to assess source potential, possible oil staining and examined the thermal history.
“Some of our geochemical analyses were conducted on drill cuttings that are almost 50 years old, which confirms that a lot of new information can be found in old materials,” said Martin Fowler, head of APT’s Canadian operation.
The study generated new lower Jurassic source rock screening data, vitrinite and spore color maturity data, and data from apatite thermochronology, a method of recovering the time-temperature history of source rock, subsequently applied for basin modeling.
APT has compared the oil stain data with both nearby Jeanne d’Arc oils and Lower Jurassic oils stain data from the European conjugate (UK, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal), with the resultant data set said to enhance understanding of Lower Jurassic source presence in the North Atlantic domain.
Fowler said: “In Europe, intra-continental basins hosting Lower Jurassic source rocks are well known, sourcing commercial oil deposits in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and the UK. However, to the south and west their occurrence is much less well understood.
“This study has for the first time demonstrated their continuation across the North Atlantic conjugate. It is obviously a big jump between identifying a new oil presence from geochemical analyses to making an actual discovery, but we hope that our analyses could be of interest to energy companies that are investigating opportunities offshore Canada.”
05/28/2020
