Geology and assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the East Siberian Sea Basin Province, 2008

The East Siberian Sea Basin, which lies beneath the continental shelf east of the New Siberian Islands, is one of the better-known basins in a series of postorogenic (successor) basins in the East Siberian-Chukchi Sea region because of a reconnaissance network of seismic-reflection profiles and outcrops on nearby islands. In spite of the seismic coverage, the basin’s petroleum potential is poorly known. It is considered a separate petroleum province for the purposes of the Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal. The probability that the East Siberian Sea Basin contains at least one undiscovered accumulation >50 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMBOE) is considered to be ~22 percent. A single assessment unit was defined and studied, resulting in mean estimates of technically recoverable conventional undiscovered resources of ~20 million barrels of oil (MMBO) and 580 billion cubic feet of gas (BCFG), nonassociated.