USGS set to upgrade arctic oil, gas reserves
Nick Terdre, Contributing Editor
Interest in the hydrocarbon potential of the arctic has been high ever since the US Geological Survey (USGS) issued its World Energy Assessment 2000. This suggested that 24% of the world’s undiscovered resources, equivalent to 190 Bbbl of oil and 1,430 tcf of gas, lie in the arctic region.
Now the USGS is engaged on the Circum-Arctic Oil and Gas Resource Appraisal, a program to update and expand on its previous work. The results of this grandly titled exercise will be reported later this year in Oslo, Norway.
Speaking at IBC’s Arctic Oil and Gas 2008 conference in Oslo this April, Steven Sawhill, at the time a senior research fellow with Oslo-based research institute Ocean Futures, said the indications were that the overall estimate this time round would be greater.
Since 2000 the USGS has revisited a number of provinces included in the original report. For Alaska, said Sawhill, the updated mean assessment is 89 Bboe – a 54% increase – comprising 60% oil and 40% gas. However, the estimate for eastern Greenland has been reduced by more than 65%, mainly due to a downsized estimate for oil reserves from 44 to 17 Bbbl.
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1 - Vilkitsky, 2 - Laptev Sea, 3 - Vilyuy, 4 - Khatanga, 5 - North Kara Sea, 6 - West Barents, 7 - West Greenland, 8 - Sverdrup, 9 - Beaufort-Mackenzie
The new US Geological Survey arctic resource appraisal will include several provinces omitted in its 2000 survey. Potential provinces not assessed at the time are marked in blue and assessed provinces in yellow. (Source: USGS)
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The new appraisal will include several provinces not previously covered. The USGS already has issued assessments for three provinces in this category. For the Laptev Sea off Russia’s northern coast it estimates reserves of 9 Bboe, comprising 40% oil and 60% gas. For Canada’s Mackenzie Delta, the figure is 29 Bboe, equally divided between oil and gas. Recently, the agency also issued an estimate of 7.3 Bbbl and 52 tcf for reserves in the west Greenland-east Canada province.
The revised estimates for provinces covered in the 2000 survey, when added to new estimates for provinces not included in the first program, suggest that the USGS has identified an additional 53 Bboe since 2000, according to Sawhill. The degree of uncertainty in the figures has also been reduced, he adds.
While many of the areas covered in 2000 were largely unexplored and geological data limited, the flow of information has since begun to increase exponentially, in part due to the UN’s Law of the Sea process. The new assessments are, therefore, based on better knowledge.
Despite limited exploration to date in the arctic, the region already accounts for 15%, or 400 Bboe, of discovered hydrocarbon reserves, comprising 130 Bbbl of oil and 1,500 tcf of gas. Most of these reserves are in Russian territory or waters, including three-quarters of the oil and 90% of the gas.
Understanding ice forces
Among numerous topics covered at the Oslo conference was the contention that offshore developments in arctic regions will almost certainly require surface-piercing installations which will encounter floating ice. A good understanding of ice forces is necessary for the design of such installations, said Andrew Palmer, Keppel Professor at the Center for Offshore Research and Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore.
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Volume 68 Issue 8
August 2008
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