USGS releases Alaska oil assessment

Abstract

With the U.S. Congress gearing up for a House‐Senate conference committee battle about whether to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling, a new assessment of the amount of oil in the federal portion of the U.S. National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NRPA) is influencing the debate.The U.S. Geological Survey has found that the NPRA holds “significantly greater” petroleum resources than had been estimated previously This finding was disclosed in a 16 May report. The assessment estimated that technically recoverable oil on NPRA federal lands are between 5.9 and 13.2 billion barrels of oil; a 1980 assessment estimated between 0.3 and 5.4 billion barrels.