Pushing upstream boundaries in the Arctic
22 February 2012
The Arctic’s potential has long been a lure for explorers. But while some sectors of the region have become proved petroleum provinces other plays are proving harder to tap. Anthea Pitt reports.
THE ARCTIC’s potential has long been a lure for explorers. But while some sectors of the region have become proved petroleum provinces – Alaska’s North Slope and Russia’s Sakhalin Island, for example – other Arctic plays are proving harder to tap.
While a UN decision on subsea borders will ease the way for future licensing rounds in the region, it will not take away the risk inherent to frontier exploration. Cairn Energy’s experience in Greenland is a case in point. While the US Geological Survey estimates Greenlandic waters could hold as much as 52 billion barrels of oil equivalent, these reserves have, so far, proved elusive. UK-based Cairn entered Greenland in 2007. It now holds stakes in 11 offshore blocks, mostly in the Disko West and Baffin Bay areas, which are analogous to Canada’s east coast offshore and believed to be highly prospective. But in the past two years...