Now it is true that the definition of reserve for a fossil fuel is slightly different from the definition used for the sorts of minerals I’m more familiar with. But even with that I’d very strongly suggest that the Telegraph is wrong here:
Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK.
The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.
Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.
It follows a series of surveys by the Alexander Karpinsky vessel, operated by Rosgeo – the Russian agency charged with finding mineral reserves for commercial exploitation.
Antarctica is meant to be protected by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that bans all mineral or oil developments. The UK’s interests are overseen by the Foreign Office – but it has been accused of ignoring the emerging crisis.
A mineral deposit is “there’s some stuff here”. A mineral resource is “there’s some stuff here and given a bit of work we’re between sure and very sure that we can extract at a profit” and a mineral reserve is “we have shown to the level of proof that a bank will lend to us, a stock market allow us to raise money on the claim, that we can extract from this deposit, using current technology, at current prices and make a profit. Also, we’ve the licences and legal right to do so.”
As this claimed deposit is in an area where extraction is illegal then it’s not going to be a mineral reserve, is it?
As this claimed deposit is in an area where extraction is illegal then it’s not going to be a mineral reserve, is it?
Illegal? That’s a clincher, then, for sure.
The UK’s interests are overseen by the Foreign Office
Oh dear!
If the skill of Russia for drilling on land is anything to go by, I think the penguins should be worried!
What is the point of this treaty? Where better to drill for oil than a place where no-one lives or is disturbed? Drill, drill, drill!
No doubt the Ukies are hoping that Puke, the UK, Oz and all the rest of the claimants to Antarctica will be feeding all their troops into that frozen sausage machine, to fight over all that oil.
So this should take some of the pressure off their Eastern Front.
The British government is nearly finished killing the North Sea oil industry (might as well turn the lights out when the Grangemouth refinery closes and leaves us permanently dependent on foreign imports) and they made damn sure the UK fracking revolution was strangled in its crib.
What’s left of the UK hydrocarbon sector is eagerly looking forward to a near future where most of their profits are extracted from UK taxpayers to pay them for not supplying us with energy (the lucrative “carbon capture” fraud).
So why worry about some potential oil reserves 10,000 miles away that they “claim”, but have no ability to defend because it’s Ice Station Zebra? Nomfup, intit?
Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway College, an expert in Antarctica, who also gave evidence, said Russia’s activities were far closer to prospecting for oil and gas than to genuine science.
“The Antarctic Treaty faces renewed challenges not least from bad-faith actor Russia and increasingly assertive China.
Probably, but then we warned you Net Zero was a scam and the rest of the world was happy to encourage the West to commit economic suicide while they laughed and ate your lunch, didn’t we?
Oh well.
The British Antarctic Territory (BAT) forms the largest and most southerly of the UK’s 14 Overseas Territories and the least hospitable with 99pc of it covered in ice.
In the prehistoric past, however, it experienced warmer climates, with vegetation that potentially allowed fossil fuel deposits to form.
Prehistoric global warming caused by the dinosaurs using fossil fuels and not listening to ugly Swedish child actors, no doubt.
Dinosaurs are fossil fuels.
BiS – Pendant time: not rilly, crude oil is mostly made from dead plankton and rotten vegetation, which have always enormously outweighed and outnumbered vertebrae lifeforms, the % of complex animal cell biomass in oil must be homeopathic at best. Parts per billion maybe.
When you think about the age of the Earth, and how many silent aeons passed before the first animals made their rude nests on land, we vertebrates are Johnny Come Latelys and 99% of us have already gone extinct. (Invertebrates, such as Members of Parliament, are another story).
Unless you like niche Russian theories about abiotic petroleum. And I do, it’s a fun theory, shame about the empirical evidence. But then the biotic and abiotic theories can coexist, possibly- we know hydrocarbons can form in the naked void of space and on other planets lacking any life, so perhaps they can also form in the Earth’s crust in the absence of fossils, idk.
Although we are signatories to treaties prohibiting exploitation of the Antarctic reserves everyone is waiting for someone else to be the bad guy first. A big part of our claim comes from the Falkland Islands, which is why I’ve always believed that Argentina wants them.
“What is the point of this treaty? Where better to drill for oil than a place where no-one lives or is disturbed? Drill, drill, drill!”
That’s why, as a Yorkshireman, I am all for fracking over the Pennines on the Dark Side…
So what if parts of Lancashire eventually slide into the sea?
A big part of our claim comes from the Falkland Islands, which is why I’ve always believed that Argentina wants them.
Ushuaia is (slightly) closer to Antarctica than Stanley. Not sure about Grytviken, though. 🙂
There’s supposedly oil under the waters around the Falklands.
@chrismiller
There’s supposedly oil under the waters around the Falklands.
You’re right.
They have found some. Not enough to be worth the investment risk and the political shenanigans that would ensue, unfortunately.
My (not a professional geologist, just an oily) view is that wherever you have a limestone cap over sandstone you’ll find oil or gas. The world has giant lakes of the stuff still unexplored. (See Trinidad for a recent example.)
Russia and Saudi depend on something whose price could collapse at any moment. Which is why they are enthusiastic supporters of western greenies.