Under All That Ice, Maybe Oil
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 30, 2004
The ice-cloaked Arctic Ocean was once apparently a warm, biologically brewing basin so rich in sinking organic material that some scientists examining fresh evidence pulled from a submerged ridge near the North Pole say the seabed may now hold significant oil and gas deposits.
This is just one of many findings from a pioneering expedition that in late summer sent dozens of scientists and technicians on three icebreakers - one with a drilling rig nine stories tall - into the drifting, crunching plates of sea ice to retrieve the first long-term record of climate and ocean conditions there. The expedition drilled 1,400 feet deep, retrieving cores of sediment that, with some gaps, span 56 million years. Scientists from around the world gathered in Bremen, Germany, this month to analyze the samples....
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So far, the coring project has mainly garnered the attention of climate experts, but word is slowly spreading among geologists focused on oil as well.
Petroleum deposits are already charted along the shallow shelves fringing the Arctic from the North Slope of Alaska to northernmost Europe. But the cylinders of dark, ancient rock extracted from the submerged mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge, are the first hint that such deposits may lie in the two-mile-deep basins near the top of the world....
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Already, under a provision in the Law of the Sea Treaty, Denmark, Russia and other countries with Arctic territory are sending out mapping expeditions aimed at expanding their seabed claims. The United States, under pressure from some conservative Republican senators who oppose many such international compacts, has not ratified the treaty. But new American Arctic surveys are planned, in part on the presumption that the United States will ratify the treaty soon....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/science/earth/30core.html?oref=login