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Crown Minerals releases new book on petroleum basins
21 September 2010 - A timely and popular production for the New Zealand Petroleum Conference was the release of the New Zealand Petroleum Basins book.
Sources: Ross Louthean and NZResources.com
The book provided to delegates gives details of new information on existing and some of the frontier basins that were the subject of both general and technical presentations at the conference.
One of the new basins covered was Pegasus, which sits adjacent to the southern side of the East Coast Basin off the North Island’s south east, was covered in a paper by GNS Science’s Dr Chris Uruski.
Crown Minerals’ group manager Chris Kilby said the book was popular and was based on the latest available data.
New Zealand has 5.7 million square kilometres of seabed. This area is 22 times greater than the country’s land mass.
The book said available data suggests that about 20 percent of New Zealand’s territory – over one million square kilometres – may host oil and gas.
The Pegasus Basin is considered to cover about 25,000 square kilometres.
Dr Uruski said the basin contained large conventional structures, source rocks were likely to be marine and there was five kilometres of Neogene that implies maturity.
A broader technical presentation on the basins was provided as a co-authored paper by Mike Isaac and Chris Uruski of GNS Science and Crown Minerals chief petroleum geologist Richard Cook.
As an aside this paper said 96 percent of the New Zealand continent is below sea level and that the typical New Zealand resident is not a sheep – but a fish!
In territorial terms New Zealand is equal in size to the European Union, the North Sea and some of the Mediterranean. Sedimentary basins within this “continent” cover 1.7 million square kilometres and they contained four types of basin.
These are in technical terms:
• Cretaceous-Neogene intraplate rifts (as found in the Taranaki and Great South basins).
• Cretaceous intraplate rifting, Neogene back-arc or transform (Reinga is an example).
• Cretaceous-Paleogene passive margins, then Neogene convergent fore-arc (Raukumara is an example).
• Cretaceous – recent passive margin (Pegasus is an example).
To view an online version click the link below:
New Zealand Petroleum Basins [9.05 MB PDF]
To request a copy, please contact us...
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Related links
More news - 2010 NZ Petroleum Conference - Annual Report 2009-2010
