Tectonic feature of the Western Barents Sea and its evolution

There are rich petroleum resources in the Barents Sea which has a wide shelf. The southern part of the sea is relatively well explored. The basement of the Barents Sea shelf is formed in the time of Caledonian, which includes the Caledonian orogenic belt in west, the Svalbard-Kara microplate in centre, the Timan orogenic belt in Southeast and the Novozemelskiy fold belt in east. The western Barents Sea is characterized by a number of small basins and platforms. There are three groups of rift basins, developed in the end of Devonian-early Carboniferous, the Late Jurassic-early Cretaceous and the late Cretaceous-Cenozoic respectively. After the Caledonian, the crust of the Barents Sea was under stretching, which lead to a series of NE rift basins. From late Carboniferous, however, the rifting was ended, and followed by regional subsidence. During Permian-Triassic period, the Novozemelskiy fold belt was uplifting due to the colliding in the east edge of the Barents Sea. As the result, the provenance pattern of the Barents Sea was completely changed from west to southeast. During the end of Middle Jurassic to the early Cretaceous, the old linear structures were reactivated in the southwestern Barents Sea and new rift basins formed. The west margin of the Barents Sea was subsiding continually to be rift troughs. In addition to the west margin, the uplifting and erosion prevailed in the rest of the western Barents Sea, which brought significant influence to hydrocarbon generation and accumulation.