Alaska Reserve’s Oil Estimate Reduced About 90% by U.S. Agency
The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska may hold only about 10 percent of the untapped oil it had been thought to contain, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
There are 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil in the area, compared with a 2002 projection of 10.6 billion, the agency said today on its website. The revised estimate stems mainly from new data showing gas, not oil, in much of the reserve, according to the survey.
The Alaska reserve has been the subject of increased oil exploration in the past 10 years, spurred by discoveries in the nearby Alpine field in the mid-1990s that were the largest onshore find in the U.S. in 25 years, the agency said. Today’s report also said there is 8 trillion cubic feet less gas than the 2002 estimate of 61 trillion cubic feet.
“These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas,” Marcia McNutt, the Geological Survey’s director, said in a statement. “It’s important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area as new data becomes available.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Washington at kchipman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at Lliebert@bloomberg.net
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