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Posts tagged with "Arctic"

Greenland and Oil

Saturday, 24. October 2009, 14:54:00

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So-called self-government began in Greenland on 21 June 2009. Greenland wants, fair enough, more independence to explore its own natural resources. On the other hand it needs to exploit the same natural resources to “buy” more independence. Is this a vicious circle?

Roughly 76 percent of the voters in a referendum in 2008 wanted greater self-rule; on June 21 2009, they got it. But as part of that self-rule deal, Denmark will end up reducing its annual subsidy to Greenland—about €7.300 per person, representing about 60 percent of the island’s budget. Hence the high hopes for oil revenue. Some estimates, including those of the U.S. Geological Survey, suggest Greenland’s coastal waters could hold anywhere from 16 billion to 47 billion barrels of oil, or 800,000 barrels for every man, woman, and child.

The race has begun. 13 oil firms have been pre-qualified for the first license round for 14 enormous blocks in the Baffin Bay area off the west coast of Greenland. A second round is planned for 2012.

The water depths are typically 300-400 metres, not particularly deep by today’s standards, but the wells are still expected to cost about 67 million € a time, and drilling is likely to be confined to the summer months. After all it is still a bit dark, cold and rough in the Arctic winters.

Where will the money go? and what will the impact be on the pristine environment?



In Danish:




Academics

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Who Owns the North Pole?

Sunday, 13. September 2009, 14:40:22

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So far nobody, but a few nations are doing their utmost to claim it - on geological grounds, of course, which gives rise to a lot of great science.

Joint U.S.-Canada exploration of the Arctic sea floor discovered an unusual underwater mountain and evidence that could boost the two countries' claims that their boundaries extend farther north. For the past two months ships from the countries have ventured north in icy areas of the Arctic where almost no surface ships have been, in an effort to find out how far the continental shelf extends.

The Danish Continental Shelf Project in collaboration with the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat made a cruise with the Swedish Polar icebreaker Oden in 2009 in the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland. The aim of the expedition was to collect scientific data for the Danish and Canadian Continental Shelf projects in order to document claims for an extended continental shelf to the north of Greenland and Canada beyond the present 200 nautical mile zone. Field reports are available on line at http://a76.dk/expeditions_uk/lomrog2009_uk/ . In the 5th Field Report of 22 August they reported that they had reached the geographical North Pole. This report contains a map of their route until then.

The cruise ended in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, and according to the last (9th) Field report the expedition has been very successful and several researchers have acquired more and better data than they hoped for.



In Danish:





Academics

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Russian Chukchi Sea (and Arctic Oil)

Wednesday, 28. May 2008, 07:46:52

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My previous post was about the claims from the five coastal Arctic nations on further parts of the Arctic Ocean. These claims must be based on geology, which has lead to increased research in the area. The Arctic seabed is thought to hold 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas, which has lead to increased research in the area. The present melting of polar ice makes the region more accessible, which has lead to increased research in the area. In future years images like the one I show here below of the arctic ice may be history.

I appreciate the research, but am worried about the consequences of any possible oil production in this vulnerable environment. The Russian part is still poorly explored by present-day geological and geophysical methods. Nevertheless, the widely proposed similarities in tectonic history and depositional settings of the U.S. and the Russian sectors, point to a significant hydrocarbon (i.e. oil and gas) potential of the Russian Chukchi shelf. The estimated total recoverable resources of the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas constitutes more than 8 billions of tons in oil equivalent.

Vladimir Verzhbitsky et al. report in GeoExpro on new seismic data in the Russian part of the Chukchi Sea acquired during the summer of 2006.

Here I shall only point to some of the tectonic features shown on my simplified redrawing of one of the figures in Verzhbitsky’s report.

South-Anyui suture. Closure of the South Anyui palaeo-oceanic basin and subsequent collision between Eurasia and the New Siberian-Chukotka microplate lead to the formation of a narrow, highly deformed South-Anyui suture zone. The collision lead to the rising of a mountain range, the New Siberian-Chukotka fold-thrust fault belt, between the suture zone and the Chukchi Sea. This mountain range is better recognised on the physical map.

(Wrangel-)Herald Arch. The Herald Arch is a basement uplift cored by northeast-vergent thrust faults of Cretaceous age. (The Cretaceous Period was from around 145 to around 65 million years ago.) The time of the arch formation may be Late Kimmerian and/or Neocomian, but its reactivation might have taken place later, in the Cenozoic Period (65 million years ago till present). The structures of the Wrangel Arch are overthrusted on the North-Chukchi sedimentary basin.

(Wrangel-)Herald thrust. Movement along the Herald thrust is thought to have occurred in the Late Cretaceous to early Tertiary (Holmes, 1975; Thurston and 1987).

One pdf file (Stratigraphy) compares the U.S. Chukchi shelf stratigraphic column and the Russian Northern Chukchi shelf inferred stratigraphic column
Another pdf file (Seismic) show seismographs of respectively the Buried Northern termination of Wrangel Arch and the Lower Cretaceous Unconformity (~130-125 Ma)/Southern flank of the North Chukchi basin.

• http://www.geo365.no/TGS-Chukchi/

I treated the Chukchi Plateau (in the U.S. sector) in a post of 19 August 2007




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