Late Cretaceous Arctic Source Rock Project 2018-2019

Late Cretaceous, marine, organic-rich mudstone units containing oil-prone intervals are found across more than 1,200,000 km2 of the Canadian-Alaskan continental shelf, from the Canadian Arctic Islands to the Beaufort Sea, Northern Alaska. Source-rock intervals have the potential to extend offshore into the adjacent Amerasia Basin. The timing and lateral continuity of such intervals within this mudstone-dominated succession is, however, poorly known, both on- and offshore. This project sought to address this by characterising the source-rock potential of the Late Cretaceous Smoking Hills and Mason River formations of the Anderson Basin exposed along the Bathurst Peninsula, Canada, and placing these strata within a wider regional context. The project built on previous work as part of the Canadian Arctic Islands Project, which investigated Late Cretaceous mudstones of the Kanguk Formation in the Sverdrup Basin farther to the east.

Late Cretaceous Arctic Source Rock
Bentonites (white) yield excellent age-control in the organic-rich, marine, black shales of the Late Cretaceous Smoking Hills Formation

Four reports were released over the course of this project. Reports one and three focused on constraining the age of the Smoking Hills and Mason River formations using biostratigraphy and U-Pb zircon geochronology, respectively. The sedimentology and depositional environment of these formations were described and discussed in report one. The source rock potential of these formations was investigated in report four using a combination of rock-eval pyrolysis, biomarker, and vitrinite reflectance techniques. Report two built on previous research as part of the Canadian Arctic Islands Project by presenting an extended combined zircon U-Pb age and Hf isotope dataset from volcanic ash layers of the Kanguk Formation.

Completed: October 2022.

Contact(s): Stephen Vincent

Reports Issued in This Project

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