Buick Creek – Laprise

Exploration and Development Assessment of the Lower Cretaceous Section, Buick Creek-Laprise Area, Northeastern British Columbia

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Summary:
Location: Blocks SE: 94-A-14, NW: 94-G-8
Strata: Buick Creek/Gething/Bluesky
Year of Study: 1997

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Introduction

Lower Cretaceous strata of the Buick Creek – Laprise area are attractive exploration and development targets. Abundant existing oil and gas pools and good well control focused on deeper objectives allow us to assemble a regional study that outlines a number of exploration and development plays and specific opportunities.

Our regional study is based upon the creation of a stratigraphic framework, using well logs, cores, petrography, palynology, hydrogeology and seismic data. The oldest element of the framework is the latest Jurassic – earliest Cretaceous Buick Creek sandstone, deposited as a regionally-extensive, craton-derived deltaic system. A subsequent basinwide sea level fall created the extensive pre-Gething unconformity, expressed in the study area as a large west-east valley system. Lower Gething coarse clastics began to fill the valley as relative sea level rose. With continued transgression, deltaic to shallow marine upper Gething strata infilled the remaining topography. Another sea level drop caused incision of the Bluesky valley system, along trends subparallel to the pre-Gething system. Transgressive fluvial/estuarine Bluesky strata filled the valleys. Nonmarine Lower Cretaceous sedimentation terminated with the flooding of the Wilrich sea, which laid down widespread Bluesky transgressive shoreface sand bodies at its base.

Regional orogenic movements acting upon pre-existing structural elements profoundly influenced Lower Cretaceous sedimentation and subsequent trap formation. Columbian (latest Jurassic – earliest Cretaceous) reactivation of the Proterozoic Hay River Fault System produced block fault movements which influenced internal stratigraphy of the Buick Creek delta. Somewhat later, similar faulting dictated (in part) the routes of the pre-Gething and Bluesky valley systems. At the end of the Cretaceous, Laramide orogenesis created a western structural belt with a number of important traps in Cretaceous and older strata, as well as reactivating the Hay River Fault System blocks, creating the final trapping configurations to the east.

Hydrocarbon occurrences and potential are classified in terms of seven play types built on the stratigraphic framework summarized above. Significant exploration and development potential exists in: Buick Creek strata structurally trapped in the Laramide deformed belt, lower Gething valley fill sandstones, upper Gething channel fill sandstones, Bluesky valley fill sandstones, and Bluesky transgressive shoreface sandstones. More limited potential occurs in eastern Buick Creek structural/stratigraphic traps and upper Gething shoreface assemblage sandstones.

Careful stratigraphic mapping is essential to developing prospects in each of these plays. Seismic is a useful tool if used within the limitations dictated by the stratigraphy. Well-designed exploration and development programs, ideally incorporating multiple Cretaceous (and possibly deeper) objectives, can be economically rewarding.