Arctic oil, gas offer challenge, potential

I’ve been fascinated with the notion of huge undiscovered oil and gas resources in the world’s Arctic regions that may become assessable as the polar ice pack shrinks. This is important for those of us who worry about “peak oil,” the theory that the world will soon reach the peak of oil that can be produced.

Next year we’ll get the first educated guess of the potential resource of the Arctic when the U.S. Geological Survey completes its Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal, the first comprehensive effort to predict the amount of oil and gas that might be recovered from polar regions of the globe, and which will be available to the public.


Of more interest to Alaskans is the agency’s assessment for regions north of our state, either owned or that the United States could claim. That should be out by the end of the year, says Brenda Pierce, a Geologic Survey scientist. The federal agency is working closely with the U.S. Minerals Management Service on the Alaskan Arctic effort. Pierce gave a briefing on the project at the recent Arctic Technology conference in Anchorage sponsored by the Institute of the North.

Government and industry geologists have long known there are oil and gas deposits in the continental shelf off the Beaufort and Chukchi sea coasts of Alaska. There have been discoveries, in fact, though they were not financially feasible at the time. Oil and gas have also been found in the Canadian Beaufort Sea, in Arctic Russia and off Norway.

Anchorage Daily News