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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract

(Begin page 393)

AAPG Bulletin, V. 85, No. 3 (March 2001), P. 393-418.

Copyright ©2001. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.

Basin evolution in western Newfoundland: New insights from hydrocarbon exploration

Mark Cooper,1 John Weissenberger,2 Ian Knight,3 Doug Hostad,4 Derek Gillespie,5 Henry Williams,6 Elliott Burden,7 Janet Porter-Chaudhry,8 Don Rae,9 Elizabeth Clark10

1PanCanadian Petroleum, 150 9th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 2S5, Canada; email: [email protected]
2PanCanadian Petroleum, 150 9th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 2S5, Canada; email: [email protected]
3Newfoundland Department of Mines and Energy, P. O. Box 8700, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1B 4J6, Canada; email: [email protected]
4Hunt Oil, Suite 3300, 205-5th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P TV7, Canada; email: [email protected]
5Hunt Oil, Suite 3300, 205-5th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P TV7, Canada; email: [email protected]
6Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1B 3X5, Canada; email: [email protected]
7Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1B 3X5, Canada; email: [email protected]
8PanCanadian Petroleum, 150 9th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 2S5, Canada; email: [email protected]
9Mobil Oil Canada, 330 5th Avenue SW, Box 800, Calgary, Alberta T2P 2J7, Canada; email: [email protected]
10AEC Oil & Gas, 3700, 707 8th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 1H5, Canada; email: [email protected]

AUTHORS

Mark Cooper has a geology B.Sc. degree from Imperial College, London and a Ph.D. from Bristol University. He initially taught geology in London and at University College Cork. He moved to BP in 1985 and worked on structurally complex basins worldwide, including assignments to Calgary and Bogotá. He joined PanCanadian Petroleum as structural specialist in 1994 and now works on global new venture exploration. He has published over 40 papers, co-edited with G. D. Williams a book on inversion tectonics, and is an advisory editor for the Journal of the Geological Society of London.

John Weissenberger has a B.Sc. degree in geology from the University of Western Ontario and a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary on Frasnian sedimentology and conodont biostratigraphy of the west-central Alberta Rockies. He initially worked at Imperial Oil, Calgary on Devonian exploration projects. After joining PanCanadian in 1994, he worked on reservoir and stratigraphic aspects of Devonian through Triassic plays in the British Columbia Foothills and on western Newfoundland. He is currently the carbonate specialist at PanCanadian, working on exploration and development projects, conducting training, and pursuing practical research applications in carbonate sequence stratigraphy.

Ian Knight has been a project geologist at the Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador for more than 25 years. His interests include the stratigraphy, sedimentology, structure, regional geology, and mapping of much of the Cambrian-Ordovician shelf sequences and Carboniferous basins of western Newfoundland.

Doug Hostad currently works as a team leader, Northern Exploration Group for Hunt Oil Company of Canada. He has over 22 years of exploration experience working Canada's Frontier basins and the Western Canada sedimentary basin. His work for Hunt has been focused primarily on petroleum system analysis and prospect generation. He is a member of the AAPG and Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists.

Derek Gillespie has been a senior geophysicist with Hunt Oil Company since 1987. He received a B.A.Sc. degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto and started his career with Amoco in 1974. Before joining Hunt, he worked with Petrel Consultants Ltd. as a geophysical consultant both in Calgary and on several international assignments. His current focus with Hunt Oil Company of Canada is on exploration plays in central Alberta.

Henry Williams following his graduation, moved to the University of Oslo, then to Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he obtained a faculty appointment. He has been involved in the selection of global stratotype sections for both the upper and lower boundaries of the Ordovician, was secretary of the International Union of Geological Sciences Subcommission on Ordovician Stratigraphy, and has published over 50 scientific papers on lower Paleozoic stratigraphy, paleontology, and paleogeography. After completing several oil-related consulting projects, Henry left his position at Memorial University last year to begin a new career with Petro-Canada in hydrocarbon exploration and is currently investigating carbonate plays in western Alberta.

Elliott Burden received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Calgary in 1982. In nearly 20 years at Memorial University of Newfoundland, he has combined his interests in sedimentology and palynology as a means for better understanding the rock record. Past and present projects on a variety of topics, spanning the entire Phanerozoic and covering strata in many parts of Canada and the United States, address issues surrounding resource exploration and development.

Janet Porter-Chaudhry received a B.A.Sc. degree in engineering science, geophysics option, from the University of Toronto (1986). From 1986 to 1996 she worked at Esso Resources Canada Ltd. on a variety of exploration and development projects, as well as in their processing group. She began working at PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. in 1997 in North American frontier exploration and has since explored in a variety of areas, including western Newfoundland, Alberta and British Columbia Foothills, the Jeanne d'Arc Basin, and the Scotian Shelf. She is currently exploring in the Gulf of Mexico. Her interests are in structural interpretation and seismic imaging problems.

Don Rae is a senior geological advisor with ExxonMobil Canada based in Calgary. He graduated with B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Toronto. He joined Canadian Superior Mining as a mineral exploration geologist in 1972, where he worked in British Columbia, the Arctic, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. In 1982 he transferred to Canadian Superior Oil and later Mobil Oil, working as an exploration geologist in Western Canada, South America, and a number of petroleum provinces on Canada's east coast, including west Newfoundland. He is currently part of a multidisciplinary team conducting regional exploration offshore Nova Scotia.

Elizabeth Clark received her B.Sc. degree (honors) in geophysics from the University of Manitoba in 1987 and her Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Calgary in 1993. She worked for Mobil Oil Canada from 1993 to 2000, exploring for hydrocarbons in the Canadian Rockies foothills, western Newfoundland, and the Jeanne d'Arc Basin, offshore Newfoundland. She is now exploring for natural gas in the foothills for Alberta Energy Company.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank PanCanadian Petroleum, Hunt Oil, and Mobil Oil for permission to publish this article. Drafting was done by PentaGrafix Ltd. Early drafts of this article benefited from critical readings by John Hogg, Marian Warren, and Ian McIlreath. We thank Roland Strickland for his valuable input to the description of the well cuttings.

ABSTRACT

The Humber zone is the most external zone of the Appalachian orogen in western Newfoundland. It records multiphase deformation of the Cambrian-Ordovician passive margin and of the Ordovician to Devonian foreland basins by the Taconian, Salinian, and Acadian orogenic events.

The recent phase of exploration drilling has provided new evidence for structural, stratigraphic, reservoir, and source rock maturation models of western Newfoundland. The first well, Port au Port 1, supported the hypothesis that the Round Head thrust had an earlier extensional history prior to the Acadian compressional inversion that created the present-day structural high of the Port au Port Peninsula. The well tested a small anticline formed in a footwall shortcut fault of the Round Head thrust. The second well, Long Point M-16, was drilled at the northern tip of Long Point to test a triangle zone identified by previous workers. This well demonstrates that the frontal monocline at the western edge of the triangle zone is elevated by a stack of imbricate thrusts composed of rocks of the Taconian allochthon and compressional basement-involved faults that have uplifted the Cambrian-Ordovician carbonate platform.

The structural model developed in the Port au Port area with the aid of these wells has been extended throughout the Humber zone in western Newfoundland. Changes in structural style illustrated by regional cross sections suggest that prospective trap geometries are only developed in the southern and central parts of the region.

The reservoir model proposed invokes exposure and karsting of the footwalls of extensional faults formed as the carbonate platform collapsed during a Middle Ordovician hiatus, the St. George unconformity. Structural relief became more pronounced as extensional collapse continued through the Middle Ordovician. (Begin page 394) These structurally high fault footwalls became the foci for dolomitizing and mineralizing fluids that used major faults as fluid conduits during the Devonian. Fluids deposited sulphide ores and created zebra and sparry dolomite and some sucrosic hydrothermal dolomites in the St. George Group and the Table Point Formation.

The reservoir model, maturity and source rock data, and the structural models have been combined with seismic and onshore surface geology. This enables the prospectivity of the western Newfoundland Cambrian-Ordovician play trend to be evaluated for further exploration.

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