Discovery of live oil at Marraat, Nuussuaq: field work, drilling and logging

Abstract

Observations of oil seepage and bitumen impregnation at the surface are very important in an early evaluation of the exploration potential of a sedimentary basin, since they usually demonstrate the existence of an oil-prone source rock and that oil generation has taken place somewhere in the subsurface. Such evidence has been reported from most onshore sedimentary basins in Greenland, and solid bitumens have in many cases been correlated to a known source rock in the immediate vicinity, or in rare cases interpreted as long-distance migration from a known or an inferred source rock (see review by Christiansen, 1994).