Palaeo-oil field in a Silurian carbonate buildup, Wulff Land, North Greenland: project ‘Resources of the sedimentary basins of North and East Greenland’

Abstract

The multi-disciplinary research project ‘Resources of the sedimentary basins of North and East Greenland’ was initiated in 1995 with financial support from the Danish Research Councils (Stemmerik et al., 1996). During the 1996 field season, hydrocarbon-related studies within the project were focused on the sedimentary basins of East Greenland (Stemmerik et al., 1997), while field work in the Franklinian Basin of North Greenland from which the observations reported here derive, was limited to two weeks in early August. The project also includes research related to the ore geology of North Greenland, especially focused on the zinc-lead deposit at Citronen Fjord (Fig. 1). This aspect of the project is covered by Langdahl & Elberling (1997) and Kragh et al. (1997). The work on the Franklinian Basin succession was based at Apollo Sø in eastern Wulff Land (Fig. 1), with the main emphasis on sedimentological and sequence stratigraphic studies of carbonates of the Cambrian portion of the Ryder Gletscher Group and the Silurian Washington Land Group. These two carbonate-dominated shelf successions are equivalent in age to the main source rocks for liquid hydrocarbons in the basin, and have been suggested as potential reservoir units in the conceptual reservoir models proposed for the basin (Christiansen, 1989). Earlier investigations in the region have shown that small occurrences of bitumen are widespread in western North Greenland, although typically closely associated with nearby source rocks (Christiansen et al., 1989a). Notable exceptions are the asphalt seepages in southern Warming Land and southern Wulff Land (Fig. 1); in these cases, long distance migration of the order of 75–100 km is envisaged (Christiansen et al., 1989a). During the 1996 field season, a palaeo-oil field was identified in a carbonate buildup in eastern Wulff Land (Victoria Fjord buildup), thus demonstrating for the first time that Silurian buildups have formed large-scale reservoirs for generated hydrocarbons in the geological past.