ANWR Prospects are Enormous by U.S. Standards

Some recent critics of ANWR development dismiss the resource potential of the 1002 area as an insignificant blip on the supply screen. In fact, according to the recent USGS assessment, the resource prospects of the 1002 area are exceptional, offering the best remaining exploratory target in North America.

To put this in perspective, consider the following. The USGS assessment estimates the technically recoverable oil in the 1002 area of ANWR at between 4.25 and 11.8 billion barrels, with a mean of 7.69 billion barrels. For the mean case, well over 80% of those resources are estimated to occur in fields over 100 million barrels in size, and over 40% of those resources are estimated to occur in fields over 500 million barrels in size.

Fields of this size are extraordinarily rare in the U.S., and have become increasingly so over time. The Oil and Gas Journal publishes annually the list of all U.S. fields with ultimate recovery estimated to exceed 100 million barrels. Its January 1998 list indicates that there have only been 299 fields discovered with estimated recovery exceeding 100 million barrels, and that the bulk of these were discovered long ago and are now mostly depleted. There are only 17 of these 299 fields with remaining reserves still in excess of 100 million barrels. Of these, only 6 fields were discovered since 1980, and the largest of these was Point McIntyre in Alaska, discovered in 1988. Fields exceeding 500 million barrels are far more rare. There are only 43 such U.S. fields on the Oil and Gas Journal list (attached), most of which were also discovered long ago and depleted. The last field discovered in the U. S. exceeding 500 million barrels was the Endicott field on the North Slope of Alaska in 1978. There are only 3 U.S. fields which currently have remaining reserves in excess of 500 million barrels, with two of these (Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk) also on the North Slope of Alaska.

The data are quite clear that the North Slope, and in particular the 1002 area of ANWR, are not only significant, but are without parallel as the best exploratory prospect in the U.S.