DGGS issues proposals for ’08 research

Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys has issued proposals for 2008 geologic research on the North Slope and in the Cook Inlet area. DGGS is seeking sponsors to help fund programs, the results of which will become publicly available. The agency has been engaged since 1994 in a program of geologic mapping and research in the northern Brooks Range Foothills, where rock exposed at the surface provides valuable insights into the subsurface petroleum geology of the foothills and the North Slope.

In 2008 the division wants to do some detailed geologic mapping of the east-central North Slope; some stratigraphic and structural studies in the Brookian sequence; a pilot study into the use of geochemistry to correlate Brookian strata; some work on characterizing source rocks and hydrocarbon occurrences in the foothills; and a study into reservoir quality in the Brookian Nanushuk formation.

DGGS’S Cook Inlet basin program started in 2006, its objective to take a fresh look at the region’s geology and the elements that are significant to petroleum geology. DGGS has been conducting fieldwork in relatively undeformed Tertiary strata along the southwestern coast of the Kenai Peninsula, to shed light on the geology of subtle stratigraphic hydrocarbon traps that have generally been disregarded by other explorers

DGGS’s proposed 2008 Cook Inlet projects would investigate how the oil and gas reservoir Tertiary rocks were formed, the development of a seismic stratigraphic framework for the upper basin, the investigation of some geologic fault features, and some preliminary work aimed at eventually clarifying some aspects of the reservoir potential of the deeply buried Mesozoic rocks.