Resource plays could help refill trans-Alaska pipeline

摘要

Can Alaska match some of the other emerging oil plays in the Lower 48, namely the Eagle Ford shale and the Bakken? Alaska's Department of Natural Resources has compiled source rock and thermal maturity data of the most prominent non-Alaskan source rocks and found that they compare favorably with the known Alaskan rocks that sourced Prud-hoe Bay, Kuparuk, Alpine, Endicott, Point Thomson, Tarn, and Badami fields. These Alaskan source rocks belong to three distinct chro-nostratigraphic units that span some 150 million years from Permo-Triassic Shublik to Upper Cretaceous Brookian (Fig. 1).