April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's Arctic region holds as much as 100 billion barrels of oil and natural gas, enough to meet U.S. fuel demand for almost nine years, OAO Lukoil said.

``By our estimates, Russia's Arctic zone contains gigantic reserves,'' Leonid Fedun, deputy chief executive officer of Russia's largest independent oil company, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London yesterday. ``We're talking about 100 billion barrels of potential hydrocarbons.''

Russia, the biggest supplier of oil after Saudi Arabia, is moving into the remote, freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean as older wells in western Siberia dry up. Companies including Moscow-based Lukoil are seizing on climate change to lengthen the shipping season across the Arctic Ocean to North America.

``There's a positive aspect to global warming,'' Fedun said. Climate change is making it easier to develop offshore Arctic fields and opening up new navigation routes to Europe and the U.S., he said.

Lukoil and its U.S. partner ConocoPhillips have expanded capacity at their Varandei oil terminal in the Arctic Ocean. Lukoil plans to start loading oil from its new Yuzhno-Khylchuyu field in June. Varandei will set an example for other Russian producers, Fedun said.

The U.S. consumed 7.5 billion barrels of oil and the gas equivalent of 4 billion barrels in 2006, according to BP Plc's Statistical Review of World Energy.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lucian Kim in Moscow at lkim3@bloomberg.net; Annette Weisbach in London at aweisbach@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 11, 2008 10:27 EDT