Chapter 8 US Geological Survey Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal (CARA): introduction and summary of organization and methods

Abstract

The USGS has assessed undiscovered petroleum resources in the Arctic through geological mapping, basin analysis and quantitative assessment. The new map compilation provided the base from which geologists subdivided the Arctic for burial history modelling and quantitative assessment. The CARA was a probabilistic, geologically based study that used existing USGS methodology, modified somewhat for the circumstances of the Arctic. The assessment relied heavily on analogue modelling, with numerical input as lognormal distributions of sizes and numbers of undiscovered accumulations. Probabilistic results for individual assessment units were statistically aggregated taking geological dependencies into account. Fourteen papers in this Geological Society volume present summaries of various aspects of the CARA.

Chapter 43 Assessment of NE Greenland: prototype for development of Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal methodology

“…Nevertheless, this estimate properly reflects the rank ordering of Liverpool Land among other AUs of the CARA (Charpentier & Gautier 2011).…”

“…These AUs were initially evaluated for the marginal probability of the presence of at least one accumulation larger than the CARA minimum size (50 MMBOE). The methodological approach to the probability analysis, conditional input parameter assessment and aggregation is not discussed here, but is summarized by Charpentier & Gautier (2011).…”

“…In accordance with CARA assessment protocol (Charpentier & Gautier 2011), these two AUs were not assessed because the likelihood of an undiscovered accumulation greater than the CARA minimum size was estimated to be less than 10%. Much of the geological risk assigned to the Jameson Land AU is due to its well-documented history of 2-3 km of uplift, which is believed to have severely compromised previously formed hydrocarbon accumulations (Mathiesen et al 1995).…”

“…NE Greenland was chosen to be the prototype for development and application of the CARA methodology; this paper discusses the geological rationale, input information and results of that assessment. Charpentier & Gautier (2011) summarize the CARA methodology in this volume.…”

Geology and assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Jan Mayen Microcontinent Province, 2008

“…Results of that Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal (CARA) include aggregate resource estimates for the entire Arctic region (Bird and others, 2008;others, 2009, 2011a) and documentation of the geological framework and resource estimates for specific Arctic provinces Gautier and others, 2011b;Houseknecht and Bird, 2011;Houseknecht and others, 2012a,b;Klett and others, 2011;Moore and others, 2011;Schenk, 2011a,b;Sørensen and others, 2011). The procedures and methods used in conducting the CircumArctic Resource Appraisal are documented by Charpentier and Gautier (2011) and Charpentier (2017, this volume, chapter B) and the location and extent of the basins evaluated are delimited by others (2010, 2011). The purpose of this chapter is to provide a synthesis of the petroleum geology of the Jan Mayen Microcontinent Province, to present the reasoning and input parameters used by the CARA assessment for its petroleum assessment, and to report the complete results of the resource assessment for the province.…”