The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [97]
The Third Wave
The Third Wave of human expansion in the Northern Rim thus stems from our relentless search for fossil hydrocarbons. It began in the 1960s with major discoveries in Alaska, Canada, and the West Siberian Lowland and shows no signs of abating. World interest in the Arctic, in particular, is fueled either by environmental concern for its threatened ecosystems, or excitement over perceived new bonanzas in oil and gas.
The newest frontier is the Arctic seabed. The previous chapter discussed the geopolitical commotion this dawning realization has spawned, and the critical importance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A 2008 auction offered by the U.S. Minerals Management Service sold a whopping $2.8 billion worth of Arctic offshore leases; the Canadian government similarly won record-breaking bids for leases in the Beaufort Sea.408
In 2009 a first comprehensive assessment of the Arctic Ocean’s oil and gas potential was published in Science by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the associated data files were released to the public.409 This assessment, which is still incomplete and ongoing, suggests that nearly a third of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil lies north of the Arctic Circle (see maps pp. viii-xi). All that in a place covering barely 4% of the globe.
Two huge winners are revealed by the USGS data: northern Alaska for oil, and Russia for natural gas. Of forty-nine geological provinces analyzed so far, these two places tower above all others. The Alaska Platform, covering the North Slope and extending a roughly similar area offshore, is thought to hold between 15 and 45 billion barrels of oil with a best guess of about 28 billion. This number approaches the proved reserves of Nigeria and is about one-fourth those of Iraq. Russia’s South Kara Sea alone is thought to hold between 200 and 1,400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with a best guess of 607 trillion. That number, if correct, is more than twice the proved reserves of the United States and Canada combined.
There are other promising geological provinces besides these two. For oil, they are Canada’s Mackenzie Delta, the north Barents Sea, the West Siberian Lowland, and three provinces off the east and west coasts of northern Greenland. For natural gas they are the south Barents Sea, the Alaska Platform, and the north Barents Sea.410
If recent offshore lease sales are any indication, many or all of these places will experience increasing levels of interest, exploration, and investment in the coming decades. But will drilling platforms and thousands of new offshore wells mushroom in these Arctic waters by 2050?
Possibly, but don’t bet on it. Offshore energy development is more likely to grow cautiously and incrementally. Even in ice-free oceans—which the Arctic Ocean most certainly is not—offshore drilling is complicated and expensive. Northern environments are environmentally delicate, so they demand above-normal protections. Existing ports and other maritime facilities, as discussed in Chapter 5, are scarce. Ice-resistant platforms and other new technologies still need to be invented. Outside of the Alaska Platform, the vast share of hydrocarbon in the Arctic is not oil but natural gas, which is harder to capture and transport. Oil can be simply pumped from the ground and poured into a tanker. Natural gas needs either pipelines or an expensive LNG or gas-to-liquids facility—essentially a refinery—to liquefy it. Even by 2050 these are formidable obstacles in a place that is environmentally sensitive, remote, and still inaccessible for much of the year.
Something Old Is New Again
What is assured over the next forty years is intensification