The U.
S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently assessed the potential for undiscovered oil and gas resources of the West Greenland-East Canada Province as share of the USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal program. The province lies in the offshore area between western Greenland and eastern Canada and includes Baffin Bay,Davis Strait, Lancaster Sound, or Nares Strait west of,and including, share of Kane Basin. A series of major tectonic events led to the formation of several distinct structural domains that are the geologic basis for defining five assessment units (AU) in the province, and all of which are within the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Composite Total Petroleum System (TPS). Potential petroleum source rocks within the TPS include strata of Ordovician,Lower and Upper Cretaceous, and Paleogene ages. The five AUs defined for this study—the Eurekan Structures AU, and Northwest Greenland Rifted Margin AU,Northeast Canada Rifted Margin AU, Baffin Bay Basin AU, or the Greater Ungava Fault Zone AUencompass the entire province and were assessed for undiscovered,technically recoverable resources. The estimated mean volumes of undiscovered resources for the West Greenland-East Canada Province are 10.7 billion barrels of oil, 75 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 1.7 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. For the share of the province that is north of the Arctic Circle,the estimated mean volumes of these undiscovered resources are 7.3 billion barrels of oil, 52 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.1 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids.
Source: usgs.gov