If the pessemists are right, 2005 will mark the peak of world oil production. If this is correct, have any petroleum geologists evealuated Antarctica as a possible place to drill? The place is twice as big as Australia…so is it reasonable to suppose that there must be sizeable dopsits of oil there? Granted, there are several problems:
-drilling operations could only take place during the brief Antarctic summer (2-3 months)
-transport from Antarctica will be expensive (dangerous seas, icebergs, etc.
-who owns the place? Are territorial claims recognized?
Is the geology of the place suc that there are likely to be large, recoverable oil deposits?
I would imagine that the big oil companies are seriously considering exploratory drilling…and if the world oil shortage gets worse, I can see this as a serious debate at the UN. Anybody know more?
There are territorial claims to Antarctica (see this image ), though some of the claims overlap, and for some reason a chunk of the territory goes unclaimed. Anybody know why nobody’s bothered with longitudes 90W through 150W?
Its where the alien spaceship is buried.
Regarding the “unclaimed” sector, the U.S. as well as Russia reserve rights to it. AFAIK, the territorial claims to Antarctica are not recognized by a large part of the rest of the world.
Oil exploration in Antarctica might be technologically feasible, but it would be legally difficult, partly because sovereignty over Antarctica is disputed (see above), partly because the legal status of Antarctica is covered by a system of several international conventions, the first of which entered into force in 1964. Article 7 of the Antarctica Environmental Protection Protocol, entered into effect in 1998, states pretty clearly:
[sub]Although a Bush-style administration would be likely to not give a damn about that when it’s about exploiting those resources.[/sub]
That would mean something if anyone if it was actually in force which it is not.
:smack:
Ok…governments pretty much refused to give up mining rights in Antarctica (per my posted bit) then write in language that prohibits it in another agreement (per Schnitte’s post which I read wrong assuming it was the treaty on minerals).
Color me confused.
Also…the territory map linked above did not work for me so here is another one:
It’s the R’lyehan claim. But anyone who makes that information public usually suffers a horrib
Environmental considerations aside, I think drilling for oil in Antartica would be so expensive it wouldn’t make sense unless oil cost $200-300 per barrel. IANAGeologist, but I think that the extreme conditions and distance from the more populated northern hemisphere would result in oil with a production cost of well over $100 a barrel.
IAAGeologist ib the oil business, and I agree with Dewey Finn.
Even if there is oil there, getting it out will be a huge problem. Getting it away from the South Pole will even trickier. You can’t put in a 1,200 mile undersea pipeline. The Southern Ocean is so dangerous, that most ships wavoid it like the plague. Sending in a 250,000 ton tanker into an iceberg laden sea isn’t really a good idea.
Don’t forget that it’s really freakin’ cold there! So you’re going to have to not only provide heated quarters for the unlucky saps who work there, but you’re also going to have to keep the oil heated or it will freeze. At least in Alaska, they’ve got a few months of warm weather, so they’re not having to do it all the time.
Petroleum is a non-renewable resource. We need to develop an alternative that is renewable.
That is why I am selling shares in a whale-breeding program. When we get the herd up to a high enough population we can start harvesting…
Size is irrelevant. It’s the conditions for oil to exist that are important.
According to the USGS, potential Antarctic oil is not promising. Yet the DOE says otherwise.
So there will eventually a a big fight over oil in the Antarctic. The real question should be – how much damage will Antarctica sustain before we find out, if ever, what is really there?
Isn’t conservation and alternative energy more cost-effective in the long run?
Is it necessary to cause large amounts of damage simply to decide what’s there? Has this been the rule elsewhere?
My last job was off the coast of Russia. We had to leave the area before early October, otherwise the sea was likely to freeze over. Antarctica doesn’t suffer from these temperate conditions.
Want to drill offshore? With icebergs the size of Rhode Island?. Doesn’t seem viable. Onshore? Through a glacier? Hmmm :dubious:
Drilling is possible in Alaska / Siberia because the rig is on permafrost. Antarctica is mostly a mile thick solid ice. It’s not the same.
Perhaps, but there’s another important issue that has nothing to do with cost: the amount of energy expended to extract the oil vs. the amount of oil energy you get. If, for example, one section of Antarctica contained 100 million barrels, and it required 80 million barrels of oil (in terms of energy) to extract the oil, then you’re really only getting 20 million barrels of oil. And what if it required 110 million barrels of oil (in terms of energy) to extract the oil? Then it wouldn’t make sense at all to extract the oil, regardless of the price of oil.
I read somewhere that the operation primarily occurs in the winter. It had something to do with the roads (which are made of ice and compacted snow?) being better.
Just by contrast…according to wiki, synthetic oil produced from turkey offal through “thermal depolymerization” costs about $80 a barrel at the moment. I don’t know how much synthetic oil created through the Fischer-Tropsch process costs per barrel, but I do know that a South African company is able to do it profitably.
The Antarctic/Austral summer is winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The Antarctic/Austral winter in Antarctica is quite inhospitable and most bases are reduced to mere caretaker staffs. Most transport in Antarctica takes place by air or sea, not road.
Field seasons in Antarctica seem to run about Oct/Dec → Feb/Apr, depending where on the continent you are.
Sorry dude, but old Art’s [amazon.com] already beat you to it 