I thought this was an April Fools joke until I read the related article.

I really only have one comment. If the U.S. and Canadians do not find a way to responsibly tap this oil the Russians will find a way to simply profit from it, environment be damed.

I can't run my car on April Fuels :-)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Cool - not

So global warming from the irresponsible use of oil will melt the polar ice caps and the down side is access to another 400 billion bbl of oil. I would laugh, but I'd rather not.

It's called FUD. It really doesn't matter how much oil there is or when it's likely to become available. The point of the announcement serves several purposes. Delay or stop sustainable energy development. Delay or stop potential civil unrest over peak oil.

The American myth is one of rugged individualism and by extension independence. Except of course when it comes to dependence on oil from unstable countries. America's addiction to oil is like that of smoker's addiction to nicotine. They can say "I can quit anytime I want to."

Arctic Oil & Gas based in Las Vegas? Kinda like locating Sinbad's Sand Emporium in Antarctica.

Could we simply leave the oil underground please?.
If the word of the year is Hybrid, we should start banning the word, oil=fuel.

Chris M says:

"They can say "I can quit anytime I want to.""

Nope, America is so thoroughly inured that they don't even deny the addiction anymore. Just ask anyone in America to simply stop using their car.

"What? I can't stop driving. I *need* my car!"

Did everyone miss the real story here? The real story is that the arctic once was covered in plant life, but the ice covered it all up. Trying to stop the ice melting is futile, the earth and solar system will do what they want, with or without us. We should be adapting to, not fearing, climate change.

"What? I can't stop driving. I *need* my car!"

There is some truth to that. Right now so many Americans are running lives at such a fast pace that not having a car would impact them to the point of bankrupcy.

My job requires that I get to places dozens to hundreds of miles away as soon as possible, so yes, I 'need' my car. Without my car i cannot do my job. I cannot pay my bills. I have no place to live.

Until the world can slow down, many Americans are screwed.

-Lego

400bil / 85mil per day = 4706 / 365 = 13years of oil on current use of light crude. considering that we've never suck it all out of the ground in 12 years, or that we could get that kinda of daily quote online in 10years. the highest output ever for a country was US with just over 10mil a day at peak i think.

it takes 10years to get a landbase well online today (and to up to quota), your talking about a whole lot more effort at the north pole.

we will be well into rapid decline before this starts putting 1mill per day into the market. this might ease the fall of production. but it wont keep the world turning in its current economic state. considering the last find of this size was back in 1960's this is still too little to late.

this isnt the first time 'they' have come out claiming huge finds, just to relieze their just small pockets. simmons recons you have to sink alot of wells to confirm anything - til then all bets are off.

55million years ago the sun still didnt beat down hard on the poles, so im personally not holding my breath that azolla bollomed harder than our rainforest belt without the use of hard photosynthesis. i also bet the oils going to be thick and frozen - considering they already heat the ground to get it out in some places.

shell has stated oils going to be thin at 2015, theres no way we'll get this steaming before we have no northpole left. tankers with icebergs arent going to be easy either, and peroids of the year the ice will return. we'll have a black northpole instead of a white one.

oil oil everywhere, but not a drop to pump

Actually Saudi Arabia still holds the current record at 12.5mbpd.

Russia has passed 10.5mpd and is still rising.

It is probable that the Arctic holds a vast amount of oil. Climatic events during the end of the Jurassic period would have allowed organic matter to form and then precipitate with minimal decomposition. Whether or not a proper geological sequence occurred since then is out of my scope of knowledge.

If we extrapolate from the Ghawar complex (particularly upper Uthimaya), which peaked at 6mbpd, a super-giant in the Arctic containing 400bbl could produce ~14mbpd. That's a risky assumption considering how perfect the structure of Arab D stone was/is and the incredible natural water drive.

The best way for the world to deal with its oil problems is by finding "nega-barrels", which is to say conservation. We need a huge trend toward engine downsizing and mild hybridization over the next decade. have a vehicle over 3,500lbs should require a special license and annual road tax.

On a note of irony, nature's salvation may lay in the opposite of nature: the city. Increasing population density and moving away from urban sprawl will greatly reduce fossil fuel requirements by mitigating transport needs.

Sounds like fishy speculation. Oil is expensive now. Worries are mounting. Hey, I see a buck!!

I see it like this...
global warming degrades the Arctic to the point where it cannot sustain the life and ecosystems that currently exist there.
Oil companies jump in with 'it's a shame it's ruined we may as well take the oil out - shame not to - if we don't the Russians will; and you don't want that do you!'
For such a clever species with clever leaders why are we, and they, so stupid when it comes to our world?

cheers for the corrections.

so at a max of 14mbpd it would last like 80years. and thats straight division, not to huberts bell curve.

conservation i believe will only be a reaction to price trying to contain demand. due to our industry, model for living and market driven economy, we will ride the falling decline until we are either in catastrope or have had enough time to switch a another viable technology. i have no doubt we can come up with great ways to move on, but its all about if we have enough time to adjust.

if the arctic turns out to be a mega field that can be put to use, then it will certainly help. hopefully when its hurting the most.

oh and no, this still doesnt change the fact we are going to peak and steep decline before warming sinks india. running out is the horrible miss conception of the age.

its new like these finds, particular if its actually true, that will continue to worsen the problem as ppl continue to think 'oh its going to be fine, we just found 400bb'.

dont get me wrong, al gore is one of my heros and i believe we are severly stressing the planet. but oil can cause stagflation and drive ppl to thinking about themselves. i think oil not meeting demand will drive us to using up every last drop of it as quick as we can and destorying food markets, farmland, the arctic, poorer nations, coal, nickel etc in the race to save ourselves from clear and present danger. not the next thing coming around the corner.

i think simmons and gore will have their day where they can say 'i told you so'

I'm not religious at all, but I believe this is a test. If we extract oil from the Artic, Antarctic and the areas of Siberia that have become accessible now due to the ice receding, we genuinely have no hope. Why can't these people see that there are no easy answers and that if we extract this oil that we are only delaying the inevitable. This is a test to see if countries and society can pull together to live a less impactful life. At the moment we're failing this test considerably.

Oh goody! Even MORE pollution and all the more reason to violate the Arctic! If this doesn't cause WWIII, I don't know what will. I bet the oil companies will be thrilled...ka-ching ka-ching!

I constantly see variants of the "real story" fallacy--namely, the global climate was naturally and radically different hundreds of millions of years ago , and so there's (1) nothing to be done; (2) nothing to worry about; (3) nothing new; (4) no such thing as anthropogenic climate.

It is fallacious to suppose the continuance of life during geological scale climate change implies the continuance of a particular species, much less our cultures and economies during climate change and resource exhaustion so rapid it is different in kind, as well as scale from natural climate change.

We're blithely consuming ourselves into depletion of many natural resources and hence risking the extinction of our economies at the very least, our species, and many other species if we don't wise up.

"Adaptation" means nothing if it does not mean "fitness" which must include sustainable use of resources under existing and future conditions: a species which does not exploit its environment sustainably faces population collapse and extinction by exhaustion of its resources.

and how would they know this?

there are no exploratory wells up there, no extensive seismic scans, none of the extensive infrastructure needed to determine that amount of oil.

Saudi Arabia only has half that number of proveable reserves.

it's a ridiculous claim. they are trying to sell something.

move along, nothing to see here.

I say we don't tell the oil companies about this.

My mom's backyard "could" contain 400 BILLION bbl...

Its not because some carpet-smoking geologist says his "study" proves the existence of reserves in the arctic that its true (and 400Billion bbls is just ridiculous...)

damo - I think we only get 19-20 gallons of gasoline from a barrel of sweet crude. The rest turns into diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, plastics, propane, etc. The numbers are something like that, anyway... your point is valid and now more so. Cheers.

loggers and oil companies are the same ( there right )

loggers say if you don't want the tree cut then wipe your butt plastic bags , oh thats right we need oil to make plastic bags! Just cut the crap and Drill ,Harness the wind and sun before we Starve from the lack of all three .We will know the difference between activity and accomplishment sooner than we think.