The Albert Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Mississippian (Tournaisian) age in the Moncton Subbasin of southeastern New Brunswick. It was deposited in a lake environment and includes of fish and land plants, as well as . It also includes significant deposits of oil shale. The oil shale beds are the for the petroleum and natural gas that has been produced from Albert Formation reservoirs at the Stoney Creek and McCully fields. In addition, the solid Bitumen-like hydrocarbon albertite was mined from the Albert Formation at Albert Mines between 1854 and 1884.
Lithology and mineralogy
The Albert Formation includes
sandstone,
siltstone,
mudstone, and
oil shale, with minor
limestone and conglomerate.
The oil shale beds are primarily
kerogen-rich
calcite to dolomitic
, clay marlstones, and laminated marlstones.
[Macauley, G., Ball, F.D. and Powell, T.G. 1984. A review of the Carboniferous Albert Formation oil shales of New Brunswick. Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, vol. 32, no. 1, p. 27-37.] The formation also includes local deposits of the evaporite minerals
halite (rock salt),
gypsum,
anhydrite, and
glauberite. The solid hydrocarbon
albertite occurs as veins filling fissures in some of the beds, and is derived from the hydrocarbons in the oil shales.
Environment of deposition
The Albert Formation has been interpreted as a composite
alluvial fan,
river delta, and lacustrine sequence.
The coarser-grained
lithology are nearshore deposits, while the finer-grained rocks, including the oil shale beds, are an offshore, deeper-water assemblage.
Fossils of whole fish preserved in the laminated oil shales indicate very low energy,
anoxic waters conditions.
Paleontology
The Albert Formation is known for its complete, articulated specimens of lower
Actinopterygii (palaeoniscoid) fishes, including the
genus Rhadinichthys,
Elonichthys, and
Canobius
doi:10.5194/fr-20-47-2017. There are remains of land plants such as
Lepidodendrales and
Sphenopteris,
[Bell, W.A. 1960. Mississippian Horton Group of type Windsor-Horton District, Nova Scotia. Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 314, 112 p.] as well as
.
[Utting, J. 1987. Palynostratigraphic investigation of the Albert Formation (Lower Carboniferous) of New Brunswick, Canada. Palynology, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 73-96.] Trace fossils include
Paleodictyon,
Helminthopsis, and
Planolites.
[Pickerill, R.K. 1990. Nonmarine Paleodictyon from the Carboniferous Albert Formation of southern New Brunswick. Atlantic Geology, vol. 26, p. 157-163.]
Economic resources
Oil and gas
The Albert Formation hosts the only two commercial onshore oil and gas fields in Canada's
The Maritimes. The Stoney Creek field produced from sandstone reservoirs in the Albert Formation between 1909 and 1991, and estimates suggest that significant oil remains in place there. The McCully field, which was discovered in 2000, produces from
tight gas sandstones in the upper part of the Albert Formation, above the main organic mudstone (oil shale) source rocks.
[Keighley, D. 2008. A lacustrine shoreface succession in the Albert Formation, Moncton Basin, New Brunswick. Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, vol. 56, no. 4, p. 235-258.]
Albertite
Veins of the solid black hydrocarbon that was subsequently named
albertite were first noted in the Albert Formation in 1820. In 1846, Abraham Gesner used albertite in developing the first method for distilling
kerosene, and between 1854 and 1884 albertite was mined by underground methods at Albert Mines for use in the production of kerosene and
illuminating gas.
