FormationEval, an open multiple-choice benchmark for petroleum geoscience

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ermilov, Almaz
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915799222976512
author Ermilov, Almaz
author_facet Ermilov, Almaz
contents This paper presents FormationEval, an open multiple-choice question benchmark for evaluating language models on petroleum geoscience and subsurface disciplines. The dataset contains 505 questions across seven domains including petrophysics, petroleum geology and reservoir engineering, derived from three authoritative sources using a reasoning model with detailed instructions and a concept-based approach that avoids verbatim copying of copyrighted text. Each question includes source metadata to support traceability and audit. The evaluation covers 72 models from major providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and open-weight alternatives. The top performers achieve over 97% accuracy, with Gemini 3 Pro Preview reaching 99.8%, while tier and domain gaps persist. Among open-weight models, GLM-4.7 leads at 98.6%, with several DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen and Mistral models also exceeding 93%. The performance gap between open-weight and closed models is narrower than expected, with several lower-cost open-weight models exceeding 90% accuracy. Petrophysics emerges as the most challenging domain across all models, while smaller models show wider performance variance. Residual length bias in the dataset (correct answers tend to be longer) is documented along with bias mitigation strategies applied during construction. The benchmark, evaluation code and results are publicly available.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_02158
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FormationEval, an open multiple-choice benchmark for petroleum geoscience
Ermilov, Almaz
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Geophysics
I.2.7
This paper presents FormationEval, an open multiple-choice question benchmark for evaluating language models on petroleum geoscience and subsurface disciplines. The dataset contains 505 questions across seven domains including petrophysics, petroleum geology and reservoir engineering, derived from three authoritative sources using a reasoning model with detailed instructions and a concept-based approach that avoids verbatim copying of copyrighted text. Each question includes source metadata to support traceability and audit. The evaluation covers 72 models from major providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and open-weight alternatives. The top performers achieve over 97% accuracy, with Gemini 3 Pro Preview reaching 99.8%, while tier and domain gaps persist. Among open-weight models, GLM-4.7 leads at 98.6%, with several DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen and Mistral models also exceeding 93%. The performance gap between open-weight and closed models is narrower than expected, with several lower-cost open-weight models exceeding 90% accuracy. Petrophysics emerges as the most challenging domain across all models, while smaller models show wider performance variance. Residual length bias in the dataset (correct answers tend to be longer) is documented along with bias mitigation strategies applied during construction. The benchmark, evaluation code and results are publicly available.
title FormationEval, an open multiple-choice benchmark for petroleum geoscience
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Geophysics
I.2.7
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02158