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File Created: 30-Oct-1999 by Peter S. Fischl (PSF)
Last Edit:  01-Jan-0001 by BC Geological Survey (BCGS)

Summary Help Help

NMI
Name YAKOUN RIVER OIL SHALE Mining Division Skeena
BCGS Map 103F049
Status Showing NTS Map 103F08W
Latitude 053º 24' 30'' UTM 08 (NAD 83)
Longitude 132º 18' 16'' Northing 5921081
Easting 679169
Commodities Bitumen Deposit Types A06 : Oil shale
Tectonic Belt Insular Terrane Wrangell
Capsule Geology

The area between the Yakoun River and its northeastward flowing tributary, Ghost Creek, is underlain by sediments of the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic Kunga Group and conformably overlying Lower Jurassic Maude Group. The basal formation of the Maude Group, the Ghost Creek Formation, consists of dark grey shale and silty shale that is characteristically fetid and bituminous. The upper most formation of the Kunga Group, the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic Sandilands Formation, locally also contains oil-bearing black argillites and shales.

A drill hole collared near MacMillan Bloedel's Ghost Main logging road, 2 kilometres west of the Yakoun River, encountered a 76-metre section of Ghost Creek Formation, comprised of very argillaceous, dark grey siltstone with minor thin interbeds of shale, limestone and sandstone. The unit is overlain by 44 metres of medium grey siltstone and minor sandy limestone of the Rennel Junction Formation (Maude Group) and underlain by 90 metres of interbedded to interlaminated cyclically graded sandstone to siltstone and lesser argillaceous siltstone of the Sandilands Formation (Kunga Group). Bitumen is locally present throughout the Ghost Creek Formation and is somewhat more abundant in the upper two-thirds of the formation at about 62 to 111 metres depth. Here, bitumen and heavy oil seepage occurs in calcite veined, brecciated intervals and fractures. Similar breccia zones and fractures in the underlying Sandilands Formation are locally bituminous and stained with oil.

This showing was drilled by Intercoast Resources some time prior to 1985.

Bibliography
EMPR BULL 54, pp. 60-66,178,179
GSC BULL *365, pp. 16-20
GSC MAP 1385A; 5-1990
GSC OF 2319
GSC P 86-20; 88-1E, pp. 221-227; 89-1H; pp. 19-22; 90-10, pp. 51-58
EMPR PFD 886684, 886685, 886686

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