BUT IS THERE ANY OIL?

In the Prince Rupert library I came across Evolution and Hydrocarbon Potential of the Queen Charlotte Basin, British Columbia (1991) by The Geological Survey of Canada. A look at the contents told me I needed help to answer my question "so is there any oil?" Dr. G.J. Woodsworth, the book's editor, took time to talk.

This project, was part of Frontiers Geoscience Program that also included Hibernia, and the Beaufort Sea projects. Given that the offshore drilling moratorium, was expected to expire soon, end the new information available-, the QCI's oil potential needed reassessment. drilling costs millions-, It's cost effective I get forty specialists to scrutinize exposed rocks and previous work first.

We already know there is oil

We already know there is oil. One of the. eight offshore wells drilled in the 1960s found traces. And one of the ten onshore wells dating from the 1950s hit gas. Plus there are numerous oil seeps onshore. Analyzing these showed the Jurassic oils (400 million years ago mya) had real potential. That's the same rocks that produced oil wells in Alaska's Cook Inlet.

Just take muck and cook

Three ingredients are required to produce oil: a source rock, heat, and a reservoir. Imagine some present day black muck : then you have to cook this organic soup, but not too much: else you get gas, or tar. 'Then the oil has to be bottled in some porous rock that has a cap or it seeps away. The specialists looked at the rock-with this in mind. Some updated the classifications of different rock layers; some correlated larger fossil,-, to single, celled fossils more likely be recovered -from drilling. Others looked at the heating caused by volcanics etc.

Even if oil is present one needs to have a drilling strategy. Where do I look? Woodsworth himself provided a clue that extended the search considerably. Prince Rupert is on the Alexandria terrane (more about terranes another day). We know from Alaskan work that there is no oil. But where does Alexandria meet the Wrangellia Terrane of the QCls (which Includes Vancouver Isl. and Cook inlet? We used to think it was somewhere off Sandspit, then Woodsworth recognized rocks on Bonilla Isl. Southwest of Rupert, as Wrangellian. That makes Hecate Straits and Queen Charlotte Sound more attractive.

Haggart predicts oil in QC Sound not Hecate

James Haggart who specializes in Mollusks (clams etc.) from the Cretaceous era (100 mya) has provided a vision that made Woodsworth's Bonilla observations important. Haggart used fossils to evaluate a previous hodge, podge of named rock formations and their supposed ages. He came up with one simple conclusion . All were laid down at the same time: some were fi-intertidal, while others from deep offshore. The Cretaceous eras rising sea level had tricked his predecessors. Haggart even found the advancing ancient shorelines. He concluded that Hecate Straits was high and dry back then; so all those offshore wells were drilling in the wrong place. If there had been any oil it would have eroded away eons ago. No the place Haggart would look for oil in commercial quantities would be in Queen Charlotte Sound. It had been ocean back then, and all the conditions were right.

-Haggart was off to Los Anglos to tell. an oil researchers' conference about his model when I last saw him. Time will tell if they are convinced to gamble millions to see if he's right.

Haggart didn t look like an artist, but that's what he is. Our Culture is preoccupied with 'creating worldly wealth' and pushes creative people in that direction. Woodsworth and the other specialists have. given us craftsmanship, but Haggart's work used imagination on par with a medieval cathedral or a north coast totem pole.

Here is Muck Cooker

The extinct volcanoes are the remnants of a "hot spot" which the crust passed over. There are similar but less impressive volcanoes in Bella Coola regions too.

This map of physiographic provinces has been enhanced (the Goose Island Group etc are not that prominent)