Marine source rocks of New Zeland
- Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Canberra (Australia); and others
Exploration in New Zealand is moving beyond the Taranaki Basin with its mainly terrestrial source rocks. Good to excellent quality marine source rocks exist and have generated oil in the Northland, East Coast W North Taranaki Basins. These high quality source rocks are Wespread throughout the late Cretaceous - Paleocene passive margin sequence in these basins as well in offshore Canterbury and the Great South Basin. This paper details the character, distribution, generative capacity and maturation behavior of the two main source units and shows how they can be correlated to the numerous seeps and oil impregnations found in the East Coast and Northland Basins. As well as being useful in basin modelling, kinetic maturation parameters for these two source rock facies help to explain differences in the biomarker and isotopic composition of seep oils and also explain trends in Rock Eval Tmax which are unrelated to maturity. In the East Coast Basin alone, the raw oil potential of the Waipawa Black Shale approaches 80 billion barrels. An understanding of the marine source rocks described here is crucial to evaluating the hydrocarbon prospectivity of New Zealand away from the Taranaki Basin.
- OSTI ID:
- 425758
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960527-; TRN: 96:004994-0397
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Annual convention of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Inc. and the Society for Sedimentary Geology: global exploration and geotechnology, San Diego, CA (United States), 19-22 May 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of 1996 AAPG annual convention. Volume 5; PB: 231 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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