Climate change, future Arctic Sea ice, and the competitiveness of European Arctic offshore oil and gas production on world markets

Abstract

A significant share of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources are assumed to lie under the seabed of the Arctic Ocean. Up until now, the exploitation of the resources especially under the European Arctic has largely been prevented by the challenges posed by sea ice coverage, harsh weather conditions, darkness, remoteness of the fields, and lack of infrastructure. Gradual warming has, however, improved the accessibility of the Arctic Ocean. We show for the most resource-abundant European Arctic Seas whether and how a climate induced reduction in sea ice might impact future accessibility of offshore natural gas and crude oil resources. Based on this analysis we show for a number of illustrative but representative locations which technology options exist based on a cost-minimization assessment. We find that under current hydrocarbon prices, oil and gas from the European offshore Arctic is not competitive on world markets.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-017-0957-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Novel cement slurry containing micro‐encapsulated phase change materials: Characterization, application and mechanism analysis

“…The SEM of different cement stone at 24 hours is shown in Figure 17. As a result, a large number of Ca(OH) 2 C-S-H were observed in the SEM of TCM-0 at 24 hours. 35 Moreover, the results show that the early products Ca(OH) 2 and C-S-H decreased with the increase of Micro-P1 dosage.…”

“…The reserves of ocean oil and gas resources are very huge, and the ocean oil and gas resources will be the main source of future crude oil production growth, and more than 50% of the world's oil and gas production will come from the ocean . But, more than 70% of marine cementing faces the challenge of hydrate decomposition .…”

“…The reserves of ocean oil and gas resources are very huge, and the ocean oil and gas resources will be the main source of future crude oil production growth, and more than 50% of the world's oil and gas production will come from the ocean. 1,2 But, more than 70% of marine cementing faces the challenge of hydrate decomposition. 3,4 Natural gas hydrates are a metastable cage compound formed under low temperature and high pressure conditions, mainly distributed on the continental slope outside the continental shelf, sedimentary rock layers at the bottom of deep sea and deep lake and polar permafrost regions.…”

Vessel Operations in the Arctic, 2015–2017

“…However, in the past, market forces have influenced the levels of Arctic oil industry activities (Harsem et al, 2015). For example, a 2007/2008 global decline in oil demand and prices slowed oil/gas production in the Arctic (Petrick et al, 2017). Economic conditions akin to the 2007/2008 downturn, or other factors, may once again slow production in the future (Lindholt and Glomsrød, 2012).…”

A framework for assessing the economic impacts of Arctic change

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