Late Cretaceous Arctic Source Rock Project 2018-2019
Regionally extensive Late Cretaceous, marine, organic-rich mudstone units that contain oil-prone intervals are found across more than 1,200,000 km2 from the Canadian Arctic Islands to the Beaufort Sea, N. Alaska and potentially even beyond. Despite their importance for hydrocarbon exploration, these units have not been studied in great detail. Current unknowns are the organic matter composition, the lateral continuity of source rock intervals and the timing of source rock deposition. In 2016, CASP geologists visited the Smoking Hills of the Bathurst Peninsula to carry out a comprehensive study of the palaeoenvironment and source rock characteristics of the Late Cretaceous Smoking Hills Formation. This project complements earlier work carried out on the Kanguk Formation in the Sverdrup Basin.

Main objectives
- Characterisation of the source rock potential, organic matter composition and depositional environment of the Late Cretaceous Smoking Hills Formation oil shales, Bathurst Peninsula.
- Determination of the geochemistry and U-Pb geochronology of bentonites in the Smoking Hills Formation, Bathurst Peninsula.
- Combined U-Pb age and Hf isotope analysis of bentonites from the Kanguk Formation, Sverdrup Basin.
- Documentation of the biostratigraphy of the Smoking Hills Formation, Bathurst Peninsula.
Project length: 24 months from January 2018.
Contact(s): Peter Hülse
Reports Issued in This Project
- U-Pb age and geochemistry of bentonites from Late Cretaceous strata of the Anderson Basin CASP.LCASR.3
- An expanded combined U-Pb age and Hf isotope dataset from bentonites of the Kanguk Formation, Sverdrup Basin CASP.LCASR.2
- The Late Cretaceous Smoking Hills Formation source rock in the Anderson Basin: biostratigraphy and palaeoenvironment CASP.LCASR.1
Products
- Projects
- How Projects are Designed
- Project History
- Mudrock Seals in CO2 Storage Project
- Reactions and Flow of CO2 Fluid in Compositionally Immature Sandstones
- Black Sea Project 2019-2021
- Flood Basalt Impact on Hydrocarbon Systems Project 2019-2021
- Dinarides-Hellenides Project 2018-2020
- Late Cretaceous Arctic Source Rock Project 2018-2019
- Barents Shelf Provenance Project 2017-2019
- Uralian Provenance Project 2017-2019
- North Atlantic Margins Evolution Project (NAME) 2017-2019
- Flood Basalt Impact on Hydrocarbon Systems Project 2016-2018
- Black Sea Project 2016-2018
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- Data Packages
- Virtual Outcrop Models
- Geological Collections and Data
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