The Undiscovered Oil and Gas of Antarctica
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR U.S. Geological Survey The Undiscovered Oil and Gas of Antarctica by John Kingston^ OPEN-FILE REPORT 91-597 This report is preliminary and has not been reviewed for conformity with U.S. Geological Survey editorial standards or with the North American Stratigraphic Code. Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ^Santa Barbara, California CONTENTS Page Abstract ....................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................... 2 Size of area .............................................. 2 Premise and problems of petroleum recoverability .......... 2 Previous investigations and petroleum assessments ......... 2 Methods of assessment ..................................... 4 Regional geology and petroleum occurrence ...................... 6 Assessment by play analysis .................................... 13 Rifted continental margin provinces ....................... 13 General; the south Australia rifted margin analog .... 13 Antarctica-Australia rift province ................... 17 Antarctica-India rift province ....................... 20 Antarctica-Africa rift province ...................... 24 Antarctica-Falkland rift province .................... 24 Interior rift provinces ................................... 30 General .............................................. 30 Ross sea interior rift province ...................... 30 Weddell sea interior rift province ................... 33 Amery interior rift province ......................... 36 Backarc provinces ......................................... 36 Larsen backarc province .............................. 36 Byrd backarc province ................................ 40 Forearc provinces ......................................... 40 Alexander forearc province ........................... 40 Amundsen forearc province ............................ 44 Interior sag provinces .................................... 44 Wilkes Land interior sag province .................... 44 Aurora interior sag province ......................... 48 Resource assessment by areal analogy to provinces of Gondwana .. 48 Rifted continental margin provinces ....................... 48 Interior rift provinces ................................... 52 Backarc provinces ......................................... 53 Forearc provinces ......................................... 54 Interior sag provinces .................................... 54 Field-size distribution ........................................ 55 Conclusions .................................................... 57 References ..................................................... 59 Appendix A - Play analysis summaries ........................... 64 Antarctica-Australia marginal rift ........................ 65 Antarctica-India marginal rift ............................ 66 Antarctica-Africa marginal rift ........................... 67 Antarctica-Falkland marginal rift ......................... 68 Ross Sea interior rift .................................... 69 Weddell Sea interior rift ................................. 70 Amery interior rift ........................................ 71 Larsen backarc basin ...................................... 72 Byrd backarc basin ........................................ 73 Alexander forearc basin ................................... 74 Amundsen forearc basin .................................... 75 Wilkes Land interior sag .................................. 76 Aorora interior sag ....................................... 77 11 ILLUSTRATIONS Page Figure 1. Index map of Antarctica showing outcrop and sedimentary basinal area along with general location of drill sites and multichannel seismic surveys ............... 3 2. Map of Antarctica showing designation of basins and marginal basinal provinces ........................... 5 3. Reconstruction of Gondwana, showing the high-standing Gondwana platform, or Southern Gondwana, as distinguished from northern Gondwana, which was lower, receiving thick Tethyan marine sediments ............. 7 4. Reconstructed map of Antarctica and adjoining continents, as of Early Cretaceous, showing basinal areas and significant location referred to in text ............. 9 5. North-south geologic sections across Australian south margin from east to west ............................. 14 6. South-north migrated seismic time section offshore Wilkes Land .......................................... 18 7. Isopach of sediments of offshore Wilkes Land above horizon K2, the Sequence C-D interface ............... 19 8. Line drawings of seismic dip sections across Prydz Bay showing indications of rifting along the Antarctic- India province ....................................... 21 9. Reconstruction of India (and Sri Lanka) against Enderby Land, or Queen Maud Land, Antarctica showing the Cretaceous-Tertiary coastal basins and the older, perpendicular-to-coast grabens of largely Beacon- equivalent fill ...................................... 22 10. Basement tectonic map and geologic sections, Krishna - Godavari basin showing character of the eastern rifted continental margin of peninsular India ........23 11. Reconstruction of Africa against Antarctica showing the Mozambique basin opposing Queen Maud Land ........25 12. West-east seismic profile across the continental slope offshore Mozambique ..................................26 111 13. Map of Antarctic continental margin off Dronning Maud, or Queen Maud Land, showing location of ODP Hole 692B, Norwegian Antarctic Research Expeditions .............27 14. Line drawings of seismic profiles shown on figure 12 ...28 15. Detailed line drawing of BGR seismic lines off Dronning Maud Land, or Queen Maud Land ........................29 16. Map of Ross Sea showing major grabens and inferred axes beneath the shelf ice ................................ 31 17. Generalized profile across the Ross Sea ............... .32 18. Sketch map of Weddell Sea province showing major tectonic elements .................................... 34 19. Diagrammatic seismogeologic section along the southern shores of the Weddell Sea ............................ 35 20. Map of Amery Interior Rift province showing depth to magnetic basement .................................... 37 21. Profile interpreted from geophysical data across the Amery ice shelf ...................................... 38 22. Map showing location of the Larsen basin ............... 39 23. Diagrammatic section across Larsen basin showing possible plays ...................................... .41 24. Map of Byrd subglacial basin, showing the topographi cally depressed area between the Ross and Weddell Seas and areas of Cenozoic sediment accumulations ....42 25. Speculative cross-section of the Byrd subglacial basin ................................................43 26. Index map of Alexander province ....................... .45 27. Profiles along continental margin of Alexander province ............................................. 4 6 28. A sequence of maps indicating the eastward subduction, through time, of the Pacific plate beneath the Antarctic Peninsula .................................. 47 29. Major terrain elements of East Antarctica from radio echo soundings .......................................49 IV 30. Cross section showing inferred structure of the Wilkes basin ................................................ 50 31. Curve showing oil field-size distribution in the rifted margins of continental fragments of the southern, or high-standing portion of Gondwana, exclusive of the Niger Tertiary delta ................................. 56 TABLES Page Table 1. Antarctic petroleum resources ........................ 51 VI ABSTRACT Antarctica is divided geographically and geologically into two parts: East Antarctica, an early Paleozoic platform bounded by marginal and interior rift basins, and West Antarctica, a convergent margin facing the Pacific. With only little detailed geologic information on this ice- covered continent, petroleum assessment largely depends on geologic and petroleum-yield analogies to once-adjoining Gondwana sedimentary provinces. A final assessment is made by group consensus after two, not entirely independent, methods, play analysis and area-by-area analogy, are employed. It is estimated that, if recovery were made under conditions generally extant throughout the world, there would be resources of 19 billion barrels of recoverable oil (BBO) and 106 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCFG), amounting to 36 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) in Antarctica. Field size, however, is critical in this region of extremely difficult recovery conditions. Field-size analogies with other Gondwana sedimentary provinces suggest that in Antarctica: (1) no petroleum accumulations reach supergiant size (5.0 BBO), (2) giant-size fields (0.5 BBO, by international definition) exist in the rifted provinces and contain 40 percent of the rift-province petroleum, and (3) none of the convergent margin fields reach giant-size. If, as seems probable, the adverse commercial recovery conditions require as a minimum, giant-size fields, the recoverable petroleum resources would accordingly be 6 BBO and 32 TCFG or 11 BBOE. If supergiant fields are required, the Antarctic recoverable resources are probably nil. INTRODUCTION Size of Area The Antarctic continent, a fragment of Gondwana, has an area of some 5.5 million mi2 (14.25 million km2 ) with an offshore continental shelf and