Projects
Onshore Petroleum, Bay St. George NL
Strategically situated in the North Atlantic near major American and European markets, Newfoundland is a pivotal petroleum producing area with a growing petroleum services industry. Offshore Newfoundland currently produces approximately 350,000 bbls of oil per day from its first fields, Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose. Western Newfoundland, both onshore and offshore, also has the potential for world-class discoveries. The geologic targets are an extension of proven petroleum systems that extend along eastern North America from Texas and the Appalachian region.
Western Newfoundland
Bay St. George Geology
The Bay St. George Basin is a Carboniferous aged strike-slip successor basin overlying the Western Margin of the Appalachian Orogen. Basal lacustrine source rocks are proven to be mature by virtue of the oil discovery in Flat Bay #1. Upper Sequence evaporites provide excellent sealing rocks for the potential clastic reservoirs. All of the elements of an active petroleum system are in place. The basin presents high impact, large reserve potential in an onshore Canadian location. It contains several kilometers of clastic terrestrial/lacustrine sediments overlain by a shallow marine evaporitic sequence and a terrestrial sequence. Reservoir rocks occur within all sequences though the exploration effort thus far has focussed on the lower fluvial sequence. Future exploration will target deeper lacustrine black shales and interbedded sands. The closest analogue for the basin is the Sussex basin in New Brunswick where Corridor Resources has made a commercial gas field discovery at McCully (1 Tcf).
Vulcan and its 50% joint venture partner, Investcan Energy Inc., Joint Venture 28/02/2008 owns three permits covering approximately 236,000 acres in the onshore Bay St. George Basin. The company discovered a new oil system in 1999 with the Flat Bay #1 well. That well penetrated in excess of 100 metres of a petroleum-bearing formation less than 286 metres deep. Follow-up wells demonstrate a significant potential aerial extent for the Flat Bay oil deposit. The Flat Bay deposit, because of its low natural reservoir permeability, is under review for development scenarios to potentially extract the oil. There is currently no production in the Bay St. George Basin and Vulcan and Investcan are pioneering the exploration and development effort.
Click to view map of Western Newfoundland Oil Interests
Bay St. George Petroleum Targets
Database
The Company has acquired approximately 400 line kilometres of seismic data and has recently surveyed the entire basin with high-resolution aeromagnetics. Vulcan has drilled eight shallow (less than 1000m) exploratory wells in the basin. Seven of these wells have encountered oil and gas shows.
Prospects
Several prospects have been mapped with seismic ranging in depths from 700m-4500m. Aerial sizes vary from 2 sq.km with potential unproven field sizes ranging from 1 million -100 million barrels of oil equivalent based on internal geoscientific evaluation (NI51-101 non-compliant). The current focus is on the Hurricane Deeps structure which covers a tilted fault blockplay along the eastern margin of the Flat Bay Anticline which transects the petroleum permits. A location at Robinsons #1 is being drilled in 2009 to a planned depth of 3600m. It will be the first deep well in the basin. Up to two additional wells will be drilled in 2009 with a total project budget of $15,000,000 funded by the Investcan Bay St. George joint venture.
Exploration Risk-Cautionary Note
The identification of petroleum targets based on geological and geophysical interpretation does not imply that these targets contain petroleum. Only drilling, testing, and sustainable production results will confirm the existence of commercial oil fields. The basin is at the initial stages of exploration and there is currently no production in the basin.