Recently in Arctic oil and gas Category

We took the occasion of this week's Americas Assembly of The Oil Council to do not just one, but two joint Platts-Oil Council Oil Matters podcasts. But both had a common theme: Alaska.

In the first, Buccaneer Energy's CEO talks about how a shallow water Gulf of Mexico explorer chose to turn its attention to drilling in the Cook Inlet, and how various state tax changes have helped make the economics work.

They talked about a lot of things at the Alaska Oil & Gas Congress in Anchorage earlier this week. There's the issue of a gas pipeline to take natural gas away from the North Slope. Does it go to Alberta and into the North American grid, or does it go to Valdez for export as LNG?

And what about the tax system? Is it discouraging production from existing fields? And how about the federal government? Will it bless more production in places long guarded by an environmental velvet rope?

But at the end of the day, there's really only one issue in Alaska.

As the Alaska state government announced Tuesday that the state's residents were going to get their smallest dividend check since 2006 from its permanent oil fund -- $1,174 compared to $1,281 last year -- many of the industry's leaders were just down the street, talking about a future both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.

A few thoughts on this week's IEA decision to release strategic oil stocks around the world:

We recently reported in this space and in Platts Oilgram News about the heightened interest in the hydrocarbon resources of the Arctic that are becoming potentially more accessible with the retreat of the of the polar ice under the assault of global warming.

It's been assumed that a great deal of oil and natural gas is beneath floor of the Arctic Ocean. The first-ever comprehensive resource assessment, undertaken by the US Geological Survey, suggests that's a reasonable assumption. The USGS concluded that about 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of undiscovered oil may be found in the area north of the Arctic Circle, mostly offshore under less than 500 meters of water.