Tertiary Coal Resources, Eastern Arctic Archipelago

Abstract

In the eastern Canadian Arctic Archipelago major coal resources occur within the Late Cretaceous and Tertiary Eureka Sound Formation. The formation, which ranges in thickness from thin erosional outliers on central Axel Heiberg Island to a maximum thickness of 3300 m on Fosheim Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, contains numerous thick seams of coal. The coal is highly variable in quality, but seams of clean, vitrain rich coal several metres thick are present. The rank of the coal ranges from lignite through sub-bituminous to high-volatile bituminous as measured by vitrinite reflectance. Inferred resources within the area of study are calculated as 30,000 million tonnes of which 15,000 million tonnes are lignite, 11,000 million tonnes are sub-bituminous and 4000 million tonnes are high-volatile bituminous. The area encompassed only a small portion of the known outcrop area of Late Cretaceous and Tertiary coal measures in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago which indicates that considerable further resources are present.