30-06-08 The Arctic holds 100 bn barrels of oil in unexplored fields, a government geologist with the US Geological Survey said at an international oil industry gathering in Spain.
"The Arctic is almost completely unexplored," said Donald Gautier at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid. "There are 100 bn barrels of oil to be found in the Arctic."

Gautier said that throughout the world "our best guess is still that there is a 50-50 chance that there is an excess of 500 bn barrels of conventional recoverable oil in undisclosed fields as of now." The disputed ownership of the Arctic is the biggest barrier to the development of these oil resources, not a lack of technology, Gautier said.
"The real issue in the Arctic is access to those continental shelves," he said.

Five countries that border the Arctic Ocean -- Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US -- dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters.
Earlier this month BP, ConocoPhillips and MGM Energy were awarded exploration rights by the Canadian government for three offshore blocks in the Arctic region in a lease sale.
The US Geological Survey is a unit of the US Department of the Interior.