WP1&2 Geology

Work package leaders: Assoc. Prof. Sten-Andreas Grundvåg, UiT, and Assoc. Prof Kim Senger, UNIS

Integrated and multidisciplinary basin studies are carried out to provide a better basis to assess the petroleum potential and reduce exploration risk in the Barents Sea. The basin architecture and evolution are linked to deep structures and processes with emphasis on tectonic inversion, Cenozoic uplift and erosion, source-to-sink analyses, and numerical and analogue modeling.

This work package also focuses on petroleum systems and play concepts in the Barents Sea and adjacent basins of the northernmost Atlantic with an overarching goal of contributing with new data and concepts that may aid in exploration and resource potential estimates of this frontier province.

Objectives

Provide a better basis to assess the petroleum potential and reduce exploration risk in the Barents Sea. Linking scales (both vertically and laterally), geological processes and offshore-onshore tectonostratigraphic relationships. Integrating and synthesizing results from ARCEx and complementary projects with focus on timing, causes and implications of basin development and petroleum systems.

Key research tasks

Task 1.1: Basin analysis (descriptive, quantitative)

  • Contraction/inversion structures
  • Marginal basins
  • Tectonic/basin modelling
  • Cenozoic uplift and erosion
  • Source-to-sink

Task 1.2: Petroleum system elements

  • Reservoir (characterisation/sedimentology/provenance)
    o Geology of shallow reservoirs
  • Source
    o onshore-offshore samples, Triassic
    o biofacies, onshore Triassic
    o onshore-offshore stratigraphy and tectonic links
  • Trap/seal analysis
    o subsurface pressure (well data, Svalbard-Barents Sea)
    o field studies (East Greenland) fractures/fluid flow
    o Barents Sea case study: seal and trap analysis

Task 1.3: Quantitative analysis of petroleum systems and plays

  • Key input parameters, uncertainties, sensitivity studies,
  • Burial history – petroleum system modelling (Svalbard and Barents Sea)
  • Looking back – lessons learned

Task 1.4: Integration and synthesis

  • Basin evolution (mainly Barents Sea – links to Svalbard and NE Greenland)
  • Paleogeography, Source-to-sink (regional Arctic context)
  • Implications for Barents Sea petroleum systems – exploration risks

 

Kim Senger

Sten-Andreas Grundvåg

Jan Sverre Laberg

Jan Inge Faleide

Ivar Midtkandal

Snorre Olaussen

Atle Rotevatn

Steffen Bergh

Sebastien Gac

Roy Helge Gabrielsen

Alvar Braathen

Morgan Ganerød

Atle Mørk

Stig-Morten Knutsen

Sverre Planke

Øyvind Hammer

Eric Salomon

Mohamed Mansour Abdelmalak

Jean-Baptiste Koehl

Fredrik Wesenlund

Thomas Birchall

Victoria Sjøholt Engelschiøn

Renate Strugstad Paulsen

Andreas Hallberg Hagset

Amando Lasabuda

Muhammad Hassaan

Malte Jochmann

Sigrun Kvendbø Hegstad

Stine Bjordal Olsen

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