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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 19 (1935)

Issue: 2. (February)

First Page: 153

Last Page: 171

Title: Athabaska Oil Sands: Apparent Example of Local Origin of Oil

Author(s): Max W. Ball (2)

Abstract:

In the debate on local origin versus long-distance migration of oil, some consideration may well be given to the oil sands of northern Alberta, Canada. Here are many thousands of square miles of oil-saturated sands, containing up to 100,000 and more barrels of oil per acre. Estimates of the total oil content run from 100 billion to 250 billion barrels. The oil sands seem to lie too flat to have induced oil migration. There is no suggestion of artesian or metamorphic fluid movement into the area from without. The sand appears to be saturated throughout most if not all of its horizontal extent; there seems to be no large additional sand area whence the oil in the saturated area might have migrated. No deeper porous bed is known which might have brought oil into the area fro remote sources. Whether the oil originated in overlying beds and migrated downward into the sand, or in underlying beds and migrated upward, or in the sand itself, the evidence suggests that the oil originated in its present location.

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