Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Presented is a two-fold research strategy of 4 applied and 2 blue skies projects that are currently underway and planned for the coming five-year term. These projects aim to improve technologies for oil and gas exploration, seepage detection and remediation as well as answer fundamental questions about the nature of our biosphere and its interaction with the geosphere. The applied research initiatives are associated with hydrocarbon detection and environmental impact studies for offshore Nova Scotia. For this portion of the program, an environmental lipidomics survey (project 1) is being conducted to develop lipid-based bioassays for deep marine hydrocarbon seep detection with the aim of de-risking offshore oil and gas exploration along the Scotian slope. In tandem with this is a clumped’ isotopologues of methane survey (project 2) of gases collected from prospective seep sites along the slope that aims to find the generating source rock intervals within the underlying basin with further evaluations on how these novel isotope signals may become modified by microbial interactions with migrating gases. These two projects will be followed-up with a methane emissions survey (project 3) of abandoned wells on the Scotian shelf to determine if leakage of the casing and well bores is occurring and to then evaluate the associated environmental impacts this may have to the ocean and atmosphere. The final applied research project (project 4) will resolve the type, abundance, and molecular hydrocarbon composition of sedimentary organic matter in targeted strata with an aim of producing multi-molecular hydrocarbon fingerprints that can be used to predict the broader-level sequence stratigraphic position of the associated rock units within a basin. Blue-skies projects are associated with astrobiological and deep time preservation studies that aim to resolve the preservation potential of organic matter hosted in unusual geological conditions. The first project (project 5) is examining polar lipids extracted from biofilters that have been stationed for over one year within drill holes at terrestrial serpentinized springs in the Tablelands of Newfoundland and the Cedars, in California, USA to interpret their microbiological diversity and to establish the modes of metabolism for these communities. Lastly, project 6 will resolve the mineralogical associations to which archaeal lipid are found in 2.6 Ga Late Archean argillites of the Abitibi Subprovince of Canada.