Offshore staff
RESTON, Virginia -- The US Geological Survey (USGS) has released an assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the East Greenland Rift Basins Province, suggesting an estimated 31.4 Bboe undiscovered.
The area surveyed included approximately 500,000 sq km (193,051 sq mi), most of which is offshore eastern Greenland in less than 500 m (1,640 ft) water depth. According to the survey, most of the undiscovered oil, natural gas, and liquids are expected to be found in the offshore parts of the province.
"This is the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the undiscovered petroleum resources of the Circum-Arctic in the public domain," says Mark Myers, USGS director. "Knowing the potential resources of the Arctic - an area of tremendous resource potential, environmental sensitivity, technological risk and geological uncertainty - is critical to our understanding of future energy supplies to the US and the world."
The survey indicated an estimated largest oil field of 2.5 Bbbl and largest gas field of 18 tcf. The estimated minimum accumulation size of technically recoverable resources is 50 MMbbl of oil and 0.3 tcf of gas.
If this resource is proved and produced, the USGS says, northeastern Greenland would rank as the nineteenth largest oil and gas province in the world. The USGS plans to release resource assessments of other arctic provinces over the next year.
8/30/2007
