Chapter 42 Greenland petroleum exploration: history, breakthroughs in understanding and future challenges

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest from the industry for exploration in the Arctic and other high-latitude areas, including possible future petroleum provinces in Greenland. Exploration focus in Greenland has mainly been on central west Greenland with several licensing rounds and, as a promising result, the highest number of licences ever seen in Greenland. Activities in the coming years are likely to be directed more towards Baffin Bay and to the NE Greenland shelf. Both of these regions offer very promising exploration targets but also major technical challenges due to many months of ice coverage every year. Preparations for new exploration, data acquisition and geological and geophysical work are in progress in these two regions. Both of the regions benefit from excellent outcrops in the neighbouring onshore areas and a rapidly increasing geophysical database offshore. The history behind data acquisition and the most important results and models for exploration in some of the possible future petroleum provinces are described with particular focus on positive indications for structures and petroleum systems together with uncertainties in interpretation and the most critical risks for exploration.

Episodic burial and exhumation in North-East Greenland before and after opening of the North-East Atlantic

“…The US Geological Survey concluded that the North-East Greenland shelf could be an important future petroleum province but stressed that Cenozoic uplift and erosion are important risk factors for the development of the hydrocarbon system (Gautier et al 2011). Christiansen (2011) found uplift to be the main exploration risk in East and North-East Greenland, but he also assigned a significant uncertainty to the limited stratigraphic control due to lack of geophysical and well data. Major oil companies acquired several licences for hydrocarbon exploration off North-East Greenland between 76 and 80°N in 2012 and 2013 (Bojesen-Koefoed et al 2014).…”

Exhumed hydrocarbon traps in East Greenland: A comment on Andrews et al. (2020)

“…The very large volumes suggested by Price and Whitham (1997) in their elegantly presented but analytically poorly documented account had a serious impact on the evaluation of the resources in the region, when East Greenland was included in the 2000 World Petroleum Assessment by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The high numbers, especially on maximum field sizes, created many discussions between industry, GEUS and the USGS (Christiansen, 2011). One interesting outcome was the initiation of the Arctic Petroleum Appraisal by the USGS, where only well-documented data were applied and eventually with more realistic resource numbers as the main consequence (Gautier, 2007;Gautier et al, 2011).…”

Widespread natural methane and oil leakage from sub-marine Arctic reservoirs

“…Our datasets from the Barents Sea document extensive oil and methane leakage from hydrocarbon reservoirs that have experienced uplift and glacial erosion, constituting an important source of methane to the water column, and, possibly, atmospheric inventory. Signi cantly, there are numerous analogous geological settings (sedimentary basins with petroleum potential that have experienced uplift and glacial erosion) across North Atlantic and Arctic continental margins where we may expect abundant hydrocarbon leakage: the Timan-Pechora Basin in the Pechora Sea 31 , the Sverdrup Basin on the northern margin of North America 69 , the Eastern Basin in the Russian part of the Barents Sea 45 , the western (Norwegian) part of the Barents Sea 41 , sedimentary basins surrounding British Isles 46,70 and sedimentary basins of western and eastern Greenland 47,71,72 (Fig. 1).…”