Resources
National Oil and Gas Assessment
The 1995 USGS National Oil and Gas Assessment Team concluded that most of our Nation's future energy supply will come from known U.S. oil and gas fields, from newly discovered natural gas deposits, and from imported oil.
The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, and concern about greenhouse gas emissions have introduced a sense of urgency to identify the Nation's remaining deposits of clean-burning natural gas. As a result, the USGS has initiated a new national assessment that focuses on the Nation's natural gas endowment and the potential of additional reserves of oil and gas from existing fields in the United States, exclusive of Federal waters.
Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) 1002 area assessment
Typical view of the ANWR 1002 area coastal plain. Photo from USGS Fact Sheet 0028-01 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.pdf ).
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980) established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In section 1002 of that act, Congress deferred a decision regarding future management of the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain ("1002 area") in recognition of the area’s potentially enormous oil and gas resources and its importance as wildlife habitat. A report on the resources, including petroleum, of the 1002 area was submitted to Congress in 1987 by the Department of the Interior (DOI). Since completion of that report, numerous wells have been drilled and oil fields discovered near ANWR, new geologic and geophysical data have become available, seismic processing and interpretation capabilities have improved, and the economics of North Slope oil development have changed significantly.
USGS commonly is asked to provide the Federal government with timely scientific information in support of decisions regarding land management, environmental quality, and economic and strategic policy. To do so, the USGS must anticipate issues most likely to be the focus of policymakers in the future. Anticipating the need for scientific information and considering the decade-old perspective of the petroleum resource estimates included in the 1987 Report to Congress, the USGS reexamined the geology of the ANWR 1002 area and prepared a new petroleum resource assessment.
The new assessment involved 3 years of study by 40 USGS scientists, who coordinated work with colleagues in other Federal agencies (USFWS, BLM, MMS), Alaska State agencies (Alaska Department of Natural Resources – Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Division of Oil and Gas, and Oil and Gas Conservation Commission), and several universities.
Map of the ANWR 1002 area. Dashed line labeled Marsh Creek anticline marks approximate boundary between undeformed area (where rocks are generally horizontal) and deformed area (where rocks are folded and faulted). Boundary is defined by Marsh Creek snticline along western half of dashed line and by other geologic elements along eastern half of dashed line. Exploration wells are coded to show whether information from them was available for the 1987 USGS assessment of in-place petroleum resources. Dashed red line shows the offshore extent of the entire assessment area. Map from USGS Fact Sheet 0028-01 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.pdf ).
New field studies were conducted, new well and sample data were analyzed, and new geophysical data were acquired. Perhaps most importantly, all 1,400 miles of seismic data that had been collected by a petroleum-industry consortium in 1984 and 1985 were reprocessed and reinterpreted. Collection of seismic data within ANWR requires an act of Congress, and these are the only seismic data ever collected within the 1002 area. All this information was integrated as basic input into the petroleum assessment.
Using a methodology similar to that used in previous USGS assessments in the ANWR and the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska, the new assessment estimates that the total quantity of technically recoverable oil in the 1002 area is 7.7 BBO (mean value), which is distributed among 10 plays. Most of the oil is estimated to occur in the western, undeformed part of the ANWR 1002 area, which is closest to existing infrastructure. Furthermore, the oil is expected to occur in a number of accumulations rather than a single large accumulation. Estimates of economically recoverable oil, expressed by probability curves, show increasing amounts of oil with increasing price. At prices less than $13 per barrel, no commercial oil is estimated, but at a price of $30 per barrel, between 3 and 10.4 billion barrels are estimated. Economic analysis includes the costs of finding, developing, producing, and transporting oil to market based on a 12 percent after-tax return on investment, all calculated in constant 1996 dollars. The amounts of in-place oil estimated for the ANWR 1002 area are larger than previous USGS estimates. The increase results, in large part, from improved resolution of reprocessed seismic data and geologic analogs provided by recent nearby oil discoveries.
Photograph of oil-stained sandstone near crest of Marsh Creek anticline, 1002 area. Photo from USGS Fact Sheet 0028-01 ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.pdf ).
