Laptev Sea Shelf in Arctic May Hold 3 Billion Barrels of Undiscovered Crude Oil

The Laptev Sea Shelf province, in the Arctic waters off of the Russian Federation, holds an estimated 3.07 billion barrels of crude oil in undiscovered resources, according to an assessment by the US Geological Survey (USGS) as part of its Circum-Arctic Oil and Gas Resource Appraisal (CARA).

The Laptev region holds a total of 9.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent in undiscovered resources, with some 32.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The USGS estimates the greatest volume of undiscovered crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids to be in the West Laptev Grabens Assessment Unit.
The Laptev assessment is the second to be released as part of the CARA project; USGS released its assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the East Greenland Rift Basins Province in October.

The Greenland assessment concluded that the mean undiscovered, conventional petroleum resources in the province to be approximately 31.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids. In comparison to the world