marine-derived Type II organic matter deposited under reducing conditions. Hydrocarbons trapped throughout the Jeanne d'Arc Basin were mainly sourced from the prolific Egret Member. After accumulation and preservation of abundant organic matter in the Egret Member, three major sandstone units were deposited during two subsequent episodes of crustal rifting. The Jeanne d'Arc, Hibernia and Ben Nevis-Avalon sandstones provide numerous tilted and faulted hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs throughout the Jeanne d'Arc Basin. Both the Jeanne d'Arc and the Hibernia formations are dominated by medium to coarse-grained sandstones that were deposited under high energy conditions by extinct rivers flowing from the south end of the basin during growth of northerly-trending normal faults. The Hibernia Formation also contains thin coal seams attesting to occasional establishment of swamp conditions. In contrast, the dominantly fine-grained sandstones of the stacked Avalon and Ben Nevis formations were mostly deposited in shallow to marginal marine settings affected by frequent storms. The Avalon sandstones were deposited when the shoreline migrated northward during uplift of the southern basin margin while the Ben Nevis sandstones were deposited as the shoreline retreated southward in a 'stuttering' fashion synchronous with growth of a new set of normal faults in response to NE-SW-oriented extension. After termination of extensional faulting near the end of Albian time, the Jeanne d'Arc Basin and its surrounding margins subsided as a region. Consequently, the basin was buried beneath a northeastward-thickening wedge of mostly un-deformed Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary strata. Continued burial of the Egret Member source rock during this final episode of passive margin conditions resulted in heating and maturation of the source rock such that it gradually passed through the "oil window" over an increasingly large area of the basin. This burial process resulted in generation of large volumes of petroleum and migration into the overlying structural and stratigraphic traps. Petroleum exploration and development Licences conferring rights to hydrocarbon exploration on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland were first awarded by the Canadian government in the mid-1960s. The first exploration well in the Jeanne d'Arc Basin was the Murre G-67 well drilled in the southern, relatively uplifted end of the basin by the oil majors Amoco and Imperial Oil in 1971. Soon after, a small, non-commercial amount of oil was test flowed in early 1973 at the Adolphus 2K-41 exploration well drilled in the much more deeply buried northern end of the Jeanne d'Arc Basin by Mobil Oil Canada and Gulf