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INTRODUCTION |
The Arctic Archipelago includes a land area of 780,000 km2 covering much of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
It contains three of the 10 largest islands in the world (Baffin, Victoria and
Ellesmere) plus twenty-two others of appreciable size. There was an oil and gas
exploration boom in the Arctic Islands between 1960 and 1985 that resulted in 191
exploration boreholes and the discovery of 20 major petroleum fields. Estimates of
the hydrocarbon resource made by the Geological Survey of Canada predict 45 to 50 Tcf
of in-place natural gas in the Sverdrup Basin, whereas the National Energy Board (NEB)
predicts 45 Tcf of marketable gas in the whole Arctic Islands area.
The Geological Survey of Canada is undertaking an update of the geological and
geochemical datasets for the Arctic Islands. This includes Rock Eval data (herein)
and the depth to the top of each stratigraphic unit in the Arctic Islands hydrocarbon
exploration boreholes (Dewing and Embry, 2007).
The stratigraphic nomenclature is presented in Figure 1.
Formation descriptions are available from the Lexicon of Canadian Geological Names
(http://gdr.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php).
These include age and lithological information, as well as the location of the
type section and references.
Excellent summaries of the geology of the Canadian Arctic are found in Trettin (1991).
The significance of the data is not discussed here. |