DELINEATING MID-CRETACEOUS SEISMIC AND WELL-LOG SEQUENCES TO ASSESS CARBON STORAGE POTENTIAL IN THE NORTHERN BALTIMORE CANYON TROUGH

The Baltimore Canyon Trough (BCT) contains >16 km of post-rift “passive” margin sediments. It was a target for oil and gas exploration in the 1970’s and 80’s due to potential reservoirs in the Mississauga and Logan Canyon Formations and to traps related to structures like the Great Stone Dome (GSD), an ultra-mafic igneous intrusion into Jurassic and Early Cretaceous strata. During exploration, numerous industry and USGS seismic surveys were collected and 34 wells were drilled (32 exploratory and 2 COST wells, including 7 on the GSD that were found to be dry). We are part of an effort to catalog and reexamine this legacy data to assess carbon storage potential in the BCT. Newly released industry multichannel seismic (MCS) data and selected USGS MCS profiles that have been re-processed to improve data quality enhance our ability to identify potential targets in mid-Cretaceous strata. Specifically, we recognize reflector terminations that were previously unresolvable and that we now use to trace three preliminary seismic sequence boundaries (SB’s) (MK1, MK2, and MK3) above a Barremian unconformity and below the major top Campanian reflection. Each has been loop-correlated throughout a 6000 sq km grid of >150 seismic lines. MK1 is identified in the northern BCT as a surface with several downlaps and some associated onlaps. MK1 downlaps onto MK2 toward the margin. MK2 is continuous throughout the BCT and has downlap, onlap and erosional truncations associated with it. Reflections downlap onto MK3 throughout our grid. All 3 SB’s correlate with surfaces traced in the southern BCT (see Schmelz et al., this meeting). Checkshots integrated with sonic logs and synthetic seismograms have been used to tie wells to seismic profiles and show that mid-Cretaceous reflections correlate (within ~30 m) with 3 Aptian to Lower Cenomanian SB’s in the Logan Canyon Formation identified by stacking patterns in gamma logs. Additional seismic interpretations using sequence stratigraphic principles will refine our understanding of the volume, extent and potential for carbon storage in the Logan Canyon sand bodies. This work was supported by DOE DE-FE0026087 (Mid-Atlantic U.S. Offshore Carbon Storage Resource Assessment Project) and DE-FC26-0NT42589 (Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Program) to Rutgers managed by Battelle.