John Hogg, (Vice President Exploration, MGM Energy, Calgary Canada) - THE MESOZOIC ATLANTIC CANADA OFFSHORE MARGIN: HISTORY OF EXPLORATION, PRODUCTION AND FUTURE EXPLORATION POTENTIAL
John earned his B.Sc. in Geology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario Canada in 1981. After graduation, John joined Gulf Canada Resources in 1981 and work for three years exploring for oil and gas in the Sverdrup Basin in Arctic Ocean Canada, and has worked the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as an explorationist and researcher for over 25 years.
He began his worked as an Exploration Geologist in Atlantic Canada in 1984 with Husky Oil Operations. Since then, he has been directly involved in the drilling of more than three dozen offshore exploration and delineation wells on the Scotian Shelf and the Grand Banks with Husky Oil, Petro-Canada, PanCanadian and EnCana and ConocoPhillips.
Currently the Vice President of MGM Energy, he is responsible for a multidisciplinary team that is working on exploration plays and development opportunities in the Canadian North.
At this time, John is also the Vice President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and a past President of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists.
ABSTRACT
THE MESOZOIC ATLANTIC CANADA OFFSHORE MARGIN: HISTORY OF EXPLORATION, PRODUCTION AND FUTURE EXPLORATION POTENTIAL
John R. Hogg and Michael E. Enachescu, MGM Energy Corporation, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The Mesozoic Basins of the western Atlantic Margin are a result of intermittent rifting and separation of North America from Africa and Europe during the Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous. The extensional tectonics produced elongated, up to 20km deep, basins and subbasins, containing both synrift and syndrift sedimentary sequences that contain excellent reservoir and source rocks. Numerous structural, stratigraphic and combination traps were formed during the synrift and postrift stages.
Exploration in Atlantic Canada began in the late 1960’s with sporadic successes and considerable exploration failures which have caused several boom and bust cycles. The late 1970’s through to the mid-1980’s was a time of significant discoveries in 1) Newfoundland’s Jeanne d’Arc Basin with giant oilfields Hibernia, Terra Nova, Hebron and White Rose and 2) in the Sable Subbasin, offshore Nova Scotia with gas discoveries at Venture, Thebaud and North Triumph fields. As is typical in most basins, the largest fields were found quite early in the exploration cycle hosted in structural features, easily mapped with seismic data. The following exploration cycle, post 1988, was slowed by a combination of low resources prices and size potential of prospects seen on 2D seismic near the discovered fields.
By the late 1990’s, a new round of exploration began in both Newfoundland and Nova Scotia that was focused on unexplored deepwater basins, the Flemish Pass and Orphan Basins off Newfoundland and the Scotian Slope basin. More than 256,105 km of new 2D seismic and 53,318 km km2 of 3D seismic surveys combined to give a much better understanding of the basins and detail structure and stratigraphy control. In the deepwater Nova Scotia one discovery was made at Annapolis, with the subsequent delineation well proving unsuccessful. More, recently, the first deep water, deep penetration well in the Orphan Basin was also an economic failure.
Future exploration in the Canadian East Coast Basins will focus around producing fields in Jeanne d’Arc Basin and new field wildcat work in the East Orphan, Laurentian and Hopedale basins, off Newfoundland and Labrador, while Nova Scotia offshore will witness a return to shelf exploration to support the pipelines. In the long-range we believe that the Industry will resume exploration in the Flemish Pass, Carson and Saglek basins of Newfoundland, the Scotian Slope Basin and Jurassic Carbonate Trend and in 2012, if the George’s Bank moratorium is lifted, we will see exploration in the Georges Bank Basin adjacent to the US border.
Canada’s Atlantic Margin remains an underexplored geological province with high risk and high reward situated in the proximity of world’s largest oil and gas market, in a harsh environment that has been conquered in both the Jeanne d’Arc and Scotian basins by on the shelf technologies.
