Oil And Gas Fields Offshore Newfoundland And Labrador: Development Potential And Scenarios
Authors: Chipman W.I. 
Published: March 2010

Sixteen oil and gas fields have been discovered offshore Newfoundland and five gas fields were discovered offshore Labrador since exploration drilling started in 1966. Total recoverable resources of these fields care estimated to be 251 × 106m3 of oil, 234 × 109m3 of gas, and 58 × 106m3 of natural gas liquids.

The geographic location of a field, resource size, quality and type, and the reservoir and production characteristics of, thepool, will strongly influence the technology and techniques used to develop each field. The technologies used to exploit these resources will likely include floating production facilities, gravity-based systems, satellite developments and horizontal drilling. In addition, potential exists to employ improved recovery techniques in some of the larger pools to increase oil recovery.

Introduction

117 exploration wells have been drilled offshore Newfoundland and Labrador resulting in the discovery of 21 oil and gas fields, 16 offshore Newfoundland and five offshore Labrador. All fields offshore Labrador contain gas except for a minor pipe recovery of light waxy oil from the North Leif I-OS well. Exploration results suggest this area is gas prone. Offshore Newfoundland, eight fields contain oil only, two fields contain gas only, while six fields contain oil and gas. Combined recover able oil and gas resources of these fields are estimated to be 251 × 106m3 (1.6 Bbbls) of oil, 234 × 109m3 (8.2 Tscf) of gas, and 58 × 106m3 (360 MMbbls) of natural gas liquids. The term "resource" is used throughout the paper to refer to those volumes of hydrocarbons that are assessed to be technically recoverable but have uncertain economic or technical viability; where the hydrocarbons in question are considered to be recoverable using current technology and under present and anticipated economic conditions, the term "recoverable" reserves is used.

The first section of the paper provides a brief review of the recoverable oil, gas and natural gas resource estimates, focussing on the largest fields. Reservoir and production characteristics are presented for each oil and gas pool, and, where appropriate, technical challenges in exploiting these resources, and opportunities for improved recovery schemes are discussed.

The second section discusses the potential and scenarios for development of the oil and gas fields. The technology which could be used to exploit the resources and the timing of development of the resources are briefly discussed.

FIGURE 1: Oil fields offshore Newfoundland. Available In Full Paper.

Discovered Resources and Field Review

Oil Resources

All the oil fields discovered to date, except for the South Tempest field, are located in the Jeanne d'Arc basin (Figure 1).

TABLE 1: Discovered resources*-Northeast Grand Banks and Labrador Shelf regions:

The recoverable oil resource estimates for these fields are shown in Table 1. Most of the oil is contained in four fields: Hibernia, Terra Nova, Hebron and Whiterose. Each of these fields is estimated to contain in excess of 238 × 106m3 (1500 MMbbls) of recoverable oil. The remaining ten fields are small, containing less than 4 × 106m3 (25 MMbbls) of oil each.