Jeanne d'Arc Basin

This basin formed in response to the large scale plate tectonic forces that ripped apart the super-continent Pangea and also led to sea-floor spreading in the North Atlantic Ocean.

[2] The upper crust beneath the wide shoals of the Grand Banks region is composed of old Precambrian and Paleozoic strata that were moderately deformed by compression during the collisions of ancient continental plates during final assembly of the super-continent Pangea in Devonian to Carboniferous times.

The Jeanne d'Arc Basin is one of these areas of rift subsidence that is bounded and transected by extensional faults which record the plate tectonic history of the North Atlantic region.

[20][21][22][15] These salt beds with interbeds of dolomite were precipitated atop and adjacent to continental clastic facies (alluvial plain sandstones and red shales) of the Eurydice Formation.

The presence of this thick salt unit throughout the Jeanne d'Arc Basin has been an important factor in subsequent structural deformation and hydrocarbon trap formation during later rift episodes.

[24] This Kimmeridgian package of organic-rich, thinly interbedded and finely laminated marlstones and calcareous shales was formally defined as the Egret Member of the Rankin Formation.

Both the Jeanne d'Arc and the Hibernia formations are dominated by medium to coarse-grained sandstones that were deposited under high energy conditions by extinct rivers flowing from the south end of the basin[14][29] during growth of northerly-trending normal faults.

[31] In contrast, the dominantly fine-grained sandstones of the stacked Avalon and Ben Nevis formations were mostly deposited in shallow to marginal marine settings affected by frequent storms.

[36] Despite this early establishment that all the components needed for an active petroleum system were present, there was a four-year hiatus in drilling in the Jeanne d'Arc Basin following termination of the Adolphus D-50 well in January 1975.

Including Hibernia P-15, there have been eighteen officially declared Significant Discoveries in the Jeanne d'Arc Basin and on the adjacent structural high area to the East [19] up to the first quarter of 2012.

Jeanne d'Arc Basin
Vein of coarsely crystalline halite in fractured dolomite interbed cored in the Upper Triassic to lowermost Jurassic Argo Formation at the Cormorant N-83 well drilled at the south end of the Jeanne d'Arc Basin.
Pebble to cobble conglomerate bed of the Upper Jurassic (Tithonian) Jeanne d'Arc Formation cored at the Hibernia O-35 well drilled in the Hibernia oilfield.
Thin coal seam with underclay pervasively churned by roots as cored from the Lower Cretaceous (Berriasian to lower Valanginian) Hibernia Formation at the Hibernia K-14 well in the Hibernia oilfield.
Sharp-based, laminated sandstone storm bed above pervasively bioturbated fair weather lower shoreface bed cored in the Lower Cretaceous (upper Aptian to lower Albian) Ben Nevis Formation at the West Ben Nevis B-75 discovery well.