Wildcat or Wild Goose: Hydrocarbon Assessments of the Canadian Arctic, 1968–2023
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Fifty-five resource assessments for northern Canada, completed between 1973 and 2023, were evaluated. Of these, 49 are considered to be relevant in that they contain quantitative resource assessments, and an additional six are prospectivity maps. Assessment areas match the major sedimentary basins, which in turn are controlled by the plate tectonic history. Lower Paleozoic basins formed following the breakup of Rodinia: Franklinian margin underlies the southern Arctic Islands; the Foxe Basin lies southwest of Baffin Island; and Hudson Bay Basin. Upper Paleozoic-Mesozoic basins formed following the Ellesmerian Orogeny: the Sverdrup Basin underlying the northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago; and the Lincoln Sea Basin that lies north of Ellesmere Island. Cretaceous-Recent margins developed after rifting of the Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay: Beaufort-Mackenzie Delta region in the western Arctic; the deep water Canada Basin that occupies the floor of the Arctic Ocean; the Arctic Margin from Banks Island to northern Ellesmere Island; and the Baffin Margin that lies between Baffin-Devon-Ellesmere islands and Greenland. The assessed volumes in each basin have been standardized to recoverable barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) for those assessments reporting both oil and gas. After standardizing units, there is a pattern across basins of initial reported volumes being large, followed by significant drop-offs, mimicking the pattern seen in a ‘hype cycle’. P10:P90 ratios are a proxy for how much knowledge about petroleum systems exist in a basin, with well-explored areas having a P10:P90 ratio of less than 2, frontier areas have a ratio of 3–4, and areas with essentially no data having a ratio of 8 or more. There is evidence of anchoring (particularly phase ratio) in early reports where the estimates of phase ratio lagged what had been proven by drilling. Evolving geological knowledge and improvements to methodology and computing power mean that the volumes reported for the same assessment area will change over time. All the historical assessments reviewed in this report have at least some limitations that affect their accuracy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".