Eyes on the Arctic: USGS says Russia has biggest share of reserves.
Russia 'sitting on vast Arctic gas stash'
The first detailed scientific analysis of potential oil and gas deposits in the Arctic has confirmed that Canada, the US and other northern nations could be sitting on fresh reserves, but identifies Russia as the biggest winner in the polar petroleum sweepstakes.
The study, headed by the US Geological Survey, follows a high-profile announcement last year by the same agency that the Arctic realm holds almost one-quarter of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves - some 90 billion barrels of oil and 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
But the study last year offered only a general overview of the location of these potential polar riches, which underlie the urgent efforts among the five Arctic Ocean coastal states - Canada, Russia, the US, Denmark and Norway - to secure expanded seabed territory under a United Nations treaty, according to a Canwest News Service report.
But the latest USGS study says Russia will end up with the greatest share of Arctic resource wealth, though key offshore deposits in boundary waters shared with Norway are already a source of friction between those two countries.
"The largest predicted deposits of undiscovered gas in the region are located in areas of overlapping territorial claims by Russia and Norway," the study said.
The study added that about 30% of the natural gas yet to be discovered in the world lies north of the Arctic Circle and most of it is in Russian territory, a study carried out by the US Geological Survey claims.
"These findings suggest that in the future the ... pre-eminence of Russian strategic control of gas resources in particular is likely to be accentuated and extended," Donald Gautier, lead author of the study published in today's edition of the journal Science, said.
The report, by an international scientific team, estimated that the Arctic also contains between 3% and 4% of the world's oil resources remaining to be discovered.
Two-thirds of the undiscovered gas is in just four areas - South Kara Sea, North Barents basin, South Barents basin and the Alaska Platform - the Guardian quoted the report as saying.
The researchers added that the South Kara Sea off Siberia contains 39% of the Arctic's undiscovered gas.
Russia has been active in asserting its claim to parts of the Arctic. It first submitted a claim to the United Nations in 2001, but was rejected for lack of evidence.
The US, Canada, Denmark and Norway have also sought to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic.
Now, Russia is working to prove that the Lomonsov Ridge, a subsea mountain range crossing the polar region, is part of its continental shelf.
In 2007 two Russian civilian mini-submarines descended to the seabed to collect geological and water samples and drop a titanium canister containing the Russian flag.
Arctic oil reserves are much smaller than those of natural gas and are unlikely to lead to any shift in world oil balance, Gautier said in a recorded briefing provided by Science.
Gautier added in the briefing that the study looked only at the geological setting and the chance that energy resources are present.
"If these resources were to be found they would not be found all at once, they would be found incrementally and they would be produced incrementally," he said.
Gautier said the study focused on geological conditions in the Arctic and how they compared to other parts of the world where oil and gas have been found.
Because so much of the Arctic is unexplored and data is limited, the researchers were forced to develop new methods to carry out assessments, Gautier said.
They collected the best information they could for the region, then subdivided it into geological areas. These areas were compared with other geological regions around the world where hydrocarbons have been found in order to produce an assessment of where more resources are likely to be located.
"As new data become available our understanding of the resources in the Arctic will change," Gautier added.