Quebec Macasty shale characteristics encouraging
Junex, Quebec City, Que., has completed an airborne gravity survey over Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to identify major structural elements in connection with its exploratory play for oil in the Ordovician Macasty shale, stratigraphic equivalent of the Utica shale in the St. Lawrence Lowlands.
Junex, Quebec City, Que., has completed an airborne gravity survey over Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to identify major structural elements in connection with its exploratory play for oil in the Ordovician Macasty shale, stratigraphic equivalent of the Utica shale in the St. Lawrence Lowlands.
The gravity survey is to be followed by seismic surveys and-or reentry of an existing well and-or drilling of stratigraphic tests in 2012 and beyond, and-or further drilling.
The company is encouraged by positive lab results from a 1970 ARCO well that indicate large oil potential on its 233,275-acre holding on the island (OGJ Online, June 29, 2011). The ARCO well was drilled to a total depth of 3,850 m as the island’s deepest hole and found the Macasty at 2,399-2,487 m.
Lab tests found the Macasty in the well to be 290 ft thick compared in the ARCO well with 131 ft in the Petrolia-Corridor Chaloupe-1 well on the island. The shale mineralogy appears favorable for fracture stimulation with 50% quartz and feldspar, 35% carbonate, and 15% clays.
The Macasty contains Type II kerogen with 1.2 to 3.7 wt % total organic carbon with 4 to 8.6% porosity averaging 6.3%. The Macasty is 800-2,200 m deep on most of Junex’s acreage, probably in the oil window.
