Nations scramble for Arctic oil, gas and minerals amid rising global demand
“Go West, young man, go West… and grow up with the country” is a phrase attributed to Horace Greeley from the New York Daily Tribune back in 1865.In 2025, the phrase might be updated to “Go North, young man, go North” as optimism rises about the potential of oil and gas and critical minerals in the Arctic.
Optimism about the size of the prize of Arctic hydrocarbons rose in 2012 when the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) assessed that the Arctic holds an estimated 13 per cent (90 billion barrels) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30 per cent of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources. The EIA has estimated that the Arctic may hold most of the world’s remaining untapped oil and gas reserves.
Although the argument that U.S. shale production is peaking is questionable, the fact that production has grown more slowly in recent years (according to the EIA) is making the challenging but ample reserves in Alaska more attractive. More urgently, the Arctic could also be a vital supplier of critical minerals and the race for those minerals is “heating up the Arctic”.
For the rest of this column: https://troymedia.com/viewpoint/arctic-energy-and-mineral-race-heats-up/