Arctic Oil – Another Untapped Source

July 23, 2008 · Filed Under Fuels, Oil Industry

Source: Bloomberg.com

July 23 (Bloomberg) — The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

One-third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found in a study released today. By contrast, a geologic formation beneath the North Pole claimed by Russian scientists last year probably holds just 1.2 percent of the Arctic’s crude, the U.S. report showed…

…“Most of the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum,” Donald Gautier, the project chief for the assessment, said in the report. “The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth.”

Source: Yahoo News

But the Arctic’s oil is not intended to replace all the supplies in the rest of world. It would last much longer by boosting available supplies and possibly reducing U.S. reliance on imported crude in the future, if America developed the resources.

The Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids, the agency said in the first publicly available petroleum resource estimate of the entire area north of the Arctic Circle.