ABSTRACT

Digital files of C15+ saturate fraction gas chromatograms of 67 samples obtained from outcrops and mining cores in the Canadian Arctic Islands are presented. Each sample is assigned to a stratigraphic unit. The significance of the data is not discussed here.

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 assignement to a stratigraphic unit according to Dewing and Embry (2007), Rock-Eval/TOC data (Obermajer et al., 2007), reflectance data (Dewing et al., 2007) and organic extract gas chromatography data (Obermajer et al., 2007a; 2007b; and herein). With the present report we are able to make use of recent technological advances to provide the data in an electronic format that should make it more amenable for use. The C15+ saturate fraction gas chromatograms have been obtained over the last ten years or so and consequently there may be some variation in retention times between different samples.

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).


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