The Neogene uplift of the Barents Sea

Hydrocarbon exploration in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea has been rather unsuccessful so far, as the traps seem to have experienced partial or complete drainage of hydrocarbons. The problems of finding commercial hydrocarbon deposits in the Norw egian Barents Sea have been attributed to glaciations and glacial erosion and uplift causing seal failure and expulsion of hydrocarbons from previously filled traps. Detailed control on the glacial erosion, sediment deposition and ice loads is therefore a n important and insufficiently utilized factor for identification of the remaining hydrocarbon resources in the Barents Sea. One main, but also difficult task of this project, is to divide the total glacial Plio-Pleistocene erosion/deposition into three stages. The challenge of estimating the amount of sediments that are removed are significant because we have only indirect data that can be used; one indirect measure being accumulated sediment volumes. Careful mass-balance control is thus important. Div iding the Plio-Pleistocene erosion/sedimentation into several stages has to be done by modeling. Rapid glacial erosion in the Barents Sea area affected local stress regimes. sudden stress changes may reactivate or initiate faults and other fractures, all owing oil and gas to escape from reservoirs. In this project models will be developed by including more geophysical and geological data, so that the models become more realistic. A better estimation of the thermal conductivity is important for better pre dictions of the amount of erosion. We propose to approach this by correlating thermal conductivity and well log data. Changes in the thermal conductivity are related to differences in porosity, texture and mineralogy. Common petrophysical logs such as spe ctral gamma, density, neutron, and sonic are in some way also affected by the same parameters.