U.S. Geological Survery Oil and Gas Resource Assessment of the Russian Arctic

• Main Authors: Donald Gautier, Timothy Klett
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: 02 PETROLEUM; CHUKCHI SEA; GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS; GEOLOGIC SURVEYS; PETROLEUM; RESOURCE ASSESSMENT; SIMULATION; Arctic; Barents Sea; Kara Sea; Chukchi Sea; East Siberian Sea; Cara; Chukchi
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1004873; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1004873; https://doi.org/10.2172/1004873

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed a study of undiscovered petroleum resources in the Russian Arctic as a part of its Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal (CARA), which comprised three broad areas of work: geological mapping, basin analysis, and quantitative assessment. The CARA was a probabilistic, geologically based study that used existing USGS methodology, modified somewhat for the circumstances of the Arctic. New map compilation was used to identify assessment units. The CARA relied heavily on geological analysis and analog modeling, with numerical input consisting of lognormal distributions of sizes and numbers of undiscovered accumulations. Probabilistic results for individual assessment units were statistically aggregated, taking geological dependencies into account. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funds were used to support the purchase of crucial seismic data collected in the Barents Sea, East Siberian Sea, and Chukchi Sea for use by USGS in its assessment of the Russian Arctic. DOE funds were also used to purchase a commercial study, which interpreted seismic data from the northern Kara Sea, and for geographic information system (GIS) support of USGS mapping of geological features, province boundaries, total petroleum systems, and assessment units used in the USGS assessment.