There has never been any commercial mining in Antarctica, there are no current plans to mine Antarctica and mining is currently completely banned by the Antarctic Treaty. There are no known future plans by any of the Antarctic Treaty nations to reverse this decision.
bas wrote:So you guys think, Merica might invade Antartica and claim all the oil? I mean, Merica have been like such unilateralists since Bush took office, such a move wouldn't surprise me....
bas wrote:I haven't read anything on Antartica, but I believe drilling for oil is banned there. I don't think the region has been explored either but chances are there could be a gigafield out there. While in the current political climate, drilling on the continent is out of the question, this could change rapidly once we are in a big oilcrisis. Though still, environmental groups will heavily oppose drilling in the antartic, crisis or not. They will probably succeed in delaying any development for some time so I think we shouldn't expect antartic oil to hit the market before 2020.
Any thoughts, sources on this subject?
Bas
Sunspot wrote:I read somewhere, from one of the oil experts (Deffeyes maybe?) that because of repeated glaciation, the land under all that ice has been hammered so much that, if there was any oil, it would have been pushed down too far and the land would have ruptured to such an extent that any containment would be impossible.
Unfortunately, oil was only formed in certain areas of the world under specific geological and biological circumstances. And most of it got destroyed long before we came along. There is only the possibility of oil in certain places, and most of the planet is simply ruled out. Including under most of the ocean. We have a great deal of knowledge about the planet now, and despite the advances in that knowledge over the last 40 years, the fact remains for all to see that the discovery of oil on the planet peaked in 1964.
Also, it's impossible to drill through all that ice and keep your hole for long: the ice flows at a different rate at different depths, so a hole drilled straight down would soon distort sideways and rip apart any pipe you put down there!!
Sunspot wrote:Well, I'll have to look into drilling through ice sometime, seems like the shear forces have to be a big problem.
But drilling deeper ignores a fact about oil - if it goes to a depth below 15,000 ft, the heat from the earth turns it into natural gas, which is where natural gas comes from. But when you go too much deeper the heat will even destroy the natural gas.
In order to preserve oil deposits, stable "pockets" have to form. The violent changes enforced on the underground strata by the repeated melting and reforming of the ice sheets is very likely to squeeze the pockets of oil, submerge it too deep, etc. etc.
Not to mention the fact that, with the likelyhood if imminent collapse, we're going to have enough trouble getting across town soon, say nothing of a nice little trip to Antarctica to drill for oil. If there were ten Saudi Arabia's worth of oil there it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference at this point.
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