The Petroleum Potential of the Netherlands Antilles

Abstract

Saba Bank is a submerged carbonate bank located immediately southwest of the island of Saba in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. It lies at the juncture of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, 200 km east of Puerto Rico and 50 km south of Sint Maarten (Figure 1). The bank is an elliptical platform 10 to 100 m below sea level that covers approximately 2200 km2 (Figure 2). Previous exploration activities have defined a Tertiary basin with over 4000 m of Eocene to recent sedimentary fill in the eastern half of the bank, and a western shelf with a thin Tertiary section underlain by a thick pre-Eocene (Cretaceous?) sedimentary sequence. The Tertiary basin and the older shelf area are separated by a major wrench fault (Figure 2). Saba Bank is part of the Netherlands Antilles. Petroleum activities on the bank are administered by Saba Bank Petroleum Resources (SBPR), a company jointly owned by the central government of the Netherlands Antilles and the island governments of Saba, Sint Maarten and Sint Eustatius. Seismic reprocessing has helped define a 200 km2 Cretaceous prospect with four-way dip closure on the undrilled western shelf area of Saba Bank. An additional five large prospects and seven leads are situated in the immediate area at various water depths (Figure 3). Saba Bank is not currently licensed for exploration and is available from SBPR under a production sharing agreement with very liberal fiscal terms.