Arctic Chronology Project

The Arctic is one of the few remaining petroleum frontiers of the world. Present estimates suggest that the potential recoverable hydrocarbon resources of the Russian offshore area alone are in excess of 100 billion toe, and the major part is within the Arctic shelf.

During a recent assessment of the world’s oil and gas resources the U.S. Geological Survey suggested that about 25 percent of the undiscovered oil and gas resources might be found in basins of the high northern latitudes. Hence, exploration is a keyword for future success in this remote area.

So far, the history of the late Cenozoic Arctic is so poorly known that scientists can look at the recovery of any material as a true exploration that will, by definition, increase the knowledge and understanding of this critical region for exploration purposes and climate change. As an important contribution to future planned exploration of Arctic frontiers including the Barents Sea, the “Arctic Chronology Project” will establish a refined stratigraphic framework for the Barents Sea over the last 3 Ma by working on existing Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) sites 910 and 911 from the marginal Arctic Ocean.

This time period recently gained renewed interest due to the fact that StatoilHydro made a large gas discovery in Plio-Pleistocene sand stones capped glacial tills in the North Sea. The “Arctic Chronology Project” draws together professionals from the Geological Survey of Norway and the University of Tromsø to focus particularly on three crucial effects of successful exploration in Arctic frontier areas:

• Consistent stratigraphic framework for Plio-Pleistocene sediment sequences,
• expanded knowledge on coupled ice dynamics and paleoceanographic changes during the Plio-Pleistocene, and
• improved spatio-temporal information on glacial erosion in the Barents Sea during the Plio-Pleistocene.