The new amount, equivalent to nearly 20 years of US foreign oil imports, is worth over $11 trillion dollars at current oil prices. One third of the amount may lie in Alaska alone, according to the study's authors.
The region also holds nearly 1,700 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 27% of known world gas reserves. Counting known deposits already surveyed, total oil and gas deposits in the Arctic are more than 410 billion barrels.
The study, known as CARA -- Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal -- included only those deposits that could be tapped with current technology. Future advances would likely boost the number further. Researchers in Denmark, Greenland, Canada, and Norway contributed data to the study.
According to project chief, Donald Gautier, "The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth."
Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil
Posted on Saturday, July 26 2008 @ 13:01 CEST by Thomas De MaesschalckDailyTech writes about a new study by the US Geological Survey that claims there might be as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Arctic.
