|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
| JOURNAL HOME | HELP | CONTACT PUBLISHER | SUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
1 ConocoPhillips Norge, North Sea Business Unit, P.O. Box 220, 4098 Tananger, Norway; and Institute for Geosciences, P.O. Box 1047, University of Oslo, Blindern N-0316, Oslo, Norway; sverre.e.ohm{at}conocophillips.com
2 Institute for Geosciences, P.O. Box 1047, University of Oslo, Blindern N-0316, Oslo, Norway
3 ConocoPhillips Norge, North Sea Business Unit, P.O. Box 220, 4098 Tananger, Norway
Sverre Ekrene Ohm received his M.S. degree in marine quaternary geology from the University of Bergen in 1983. He worked several years in the exploration departments both for the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and for the Elf Petroleum before joining Phillips, now ConocoPhillips, in 1997. His interests have more and more moved toward petroleum evaluation. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. in organic geochemistry from the University of Oslo. He currently holds a position as petroleum system analyst at ConocoPhillips, Norway, and has an associate professor II position at the Institute for Geosciences, University of Oslo, where he runs several research projects linked to the migration of petroleum and filling history of fields.
Dag A. Karlsen is an associated professor in petroleum system analysis at the Department of Consciences, University of Oslo, and has specialized in the use of oil and gas to delineate and trace out basin-scale migration patterns of petroleum for use in exploration since 1990. Since beginning his career, Karlsen has conducted research in close cooperation with all oil companies active on the Norwegian shelf, supervised 27 Cand. Scient students, master students, and 5 Ph.D. students. In 1993, Karlsen was given the Best Paper Award, 1992, by the Chemical Society of America, Geochemical Division, for a publication in Geochemica et Cosmochimica Acta. The awarded article described novel methods and interpretation schemes concerning petroleum inclusions and their use in understanding and timing reservoir filling and basin-scale petroleum migration patterns. Besides exploration-related efforts, Karlsen continues to specialize in methods for examining the products generated in nature from coals and other source rocks in close cooperation with the petroleum industry.
Timothy Austin received his B.S. degree (1980) and Ph.D. (1987) on paleomagnetism and the Quaternary history of the Barents Sea from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. He has been working in the petroleum industry as a geophysicist since 1986, starting out as a consultant geophysicist on engineering surveys, and he spent several years on the Heidrun Field Development Project. He joined Conoco in Stavanger in 1996, where he has worked on exploration projects from the North Sea to the Barents Sea. Recently for ConocoPhillips, he has had a key role in regional exploration projects in mid-Norway and the Barents Sea.
ABSTRACT
The Norwegian Barents Sea with multiple source rock intervals represents a prime example of an overfilled petroleum system. However, several episodes of uplift and erosion from the Paleocene until the Pliocene-Pleistocene have caused the depletion of hydrocarbon accumulations in the region. These uplift events were not only potentially catastrophic but have also caused the redistribution of the remaining oil and gas over laterally large distances in the Barents Sea region. This redistribution directed petroleum to distal parts of the various hydrocarbon-generating basins, thus charging traps, which otherwise would not have been reached. Therefore, we expect that discoveries will be made in distal basin settings, particularly in traps with partly leaking cap rocks, which can bleed off gas and thereby retain oil. Many oil accumulations in the region represent various mixtures of oils from several different stratigraphic source intervals. This suggests that Triassic and Paleozoic oils may be trapped below the presently drilled targets, which are mostly Jurassic in the Hammerfest Basin and older to the north and east. Deeper exploration targets also stand a higher chance of containing oil because the amount of gas being released from oil during uplift, erosion, and subsequent pressure release is lower. Uplift and erosion are followed by a reduction in temperature. This is why hydrocarbon generation is believed to have ended in uplifted areas. Some discoveries in this data set suggest, however, a significant fresh gas charge.
| JOURNAL HOME | HELP | CONTACT PUBLISHER | SUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
