Exhumed hydrocarbon traps in East Greenland: analogs for the Lower-Middle Jurassic play of NW Europe

Four exhumed hydrocarbon traps crop out in the Traill O region of East Greenland, each at the footwall crest of a fault-block formed during Early Cretaceous rifting. Former oil accumulations are indicated by a pore fill or pore lining of solid bitumen within the Jurassic sandstone-dominated Vardekloft and Olympen formations. The Vardekloft Formation is divided into an undated fluvial-dominated lower unit (0-520 m) and a Bajocian-Callovian upper unit (65-1020 m) deposited in a shallow-marine environment. The Oxfordian Olympen Formation (0-250 m) contains shallow-marine and fluviodeltaic deposits. The sandstones are dominantly quartzarenites, and petrographic fabrics, such as dissolved feldspar, late quartz cement, and stylolites, are consistent with burial depths in excess of 2.5 km. Porosities ranged from 7 to 27% (generally about 20%, about one-half of which was primary), and permeabilities ranged from 1 to 622 md, prior to the formation of solid bitumen. The distribution of solid bitumen in each trap can be mapped out, allowing sealing elements and original oil-water contacts to be defined. Three of the four exhumed traps (Mols Bjerge, Laplace Bjerg, and Bjornedal) were simple one-seal structural traps. Conformable Upper Jurassic mudstone, unconformable Albian-Cenomanian mudstone, and normal faults are the three top-sealing elements. The fourth (Svinhufvuds Bjerge) was a poly-seal trap with a combined top-seal and a low-side fault closure. Preliminary estimates of the volume of original oil in place within these structures range from 0.2-1.1 billion bbl for the Mols Bjerge trap to 5.3-11.9 billion bbl for the Bjornedal trap. These estimates are prone to large errors, due to uncertainties in estimating original trap geometry, hydrocarbon saturation, and net/gross ratio, and in the understanding of volume changes of hydrocarbon in each trap during thermal degradation of the oil. The Upper Jurassic Bernbjerg Formation is the only known potential source rock in the region, which would require a drainage distance of less than the fault-block spacing to fill the largest of the traps. Secondary hydrocarbon migration into these traps occurred between the Cenomanian (age of the youngest sealing element) and early Eocene to late Oligocene (when widespread volcanism and sill intrusion resulted in thermal degradation of the oil). Each of these structures is relatively well exposed and accessible; we believe that they will provide excellent analogs for studies of enhanced recovery from the mature Lower-Middle Jurassic oil fields of Northwest Europe.