USGS Greenland Survey Shows Much Lower Resource Potential (emphasis added):

The northeastern shore of Greenland could provide the U.S. with significantly fewer billions of barrels of oil and gas resources than previously thought, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday.

…

The government agency said it believed the area - which lies under massive sheets of ice in water depths up to 500 meters - holds 9 billion barrels of oil, 86 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 8 billion barrels of natural gas liquids that are undiscovered but recoverable.

The 2000 survey estimated 47 billion barrels of oil, 81 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 4 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

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As the last major survey of the geologic potential of the Arctic estimated that 25% of the world’s remaining undiscovered hydrocarbon resources lay within the Arctic circle, the U.S. government was hoping to supplant other crude imports with future supplies from the Arctic. Greenland, although the country governs itself, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and it is thought it would be a politically stable and a reliable supplier.

I wish more than I can say that this insane notion that we can “save ourselves form peak oil” by drilling the hell out of the Arctic would die.

First, we have very little hard evidence of what’s actually up there. I’ve long wondered where that infamous line about the Arctic containing “25% of the world’s oil and gas” came from. Did the USGS simply look at the overall geology of the area and use averages to guesstimate what it contains? Whatever the case, it now seems that we’re headed for another case a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact.

Second, finding and extracting oil from that part of the planet will be mind-blowingly dangerous and expensive, not to mention years away and likely to produce only a small production level of oil, even once we figure out how to do it.

Third, the 9 billion barrels of oil in the portion of Greenland that’s been re-assessed is enough to run the world at its current rate of consumption for less than four months. Coupled with the highly likely low production rate, this means these deposits will have little impact on our energy future.

Fourth, we will still likely exploit these reserves (as well as those in ultra deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico and those in environmentally sensitive areas off various US coastlines). It’s an inescapable conclusion, given the proximity of the peak and how much worse that will make the oil crunch.