Greenland may be sitting on big offshore oil reserves

Sedimentary basins off the island’s southwest coast could match the 45 billion barrels of North Sea reserves

Gary Park

PNA Canadian Correspondent

Greenland could be next in line to join the Arctic’s oil-producing regions, with reserves matching those of the North Sea.

The staggering scope of the sedimentary basins covering about 40,000 square kilometers off the island’s west coast were outlined by Hans Kristian Schoenwandt, head of Greenland’s Bureau for Minerals and Petroleum.

He described the basins as equaling the whole North Sea — where 30 billion barrels have been produced so far and 15 billion remain — but cautioned the reserves could be more or could be less. So far exploration has been minimal and the results inconclusive.

GronArctic Resources, a tiny Calgary-based company, drilled a test hole at Nussuaq in 1996 and gave up its license two years later when it was unable to finance further seismic work.

However, a consortium of Norway’s Statoil and the U.S.’s Phillips Petroleum has been awarded exploration permits for Greenland waters and is poised to start test-drilling and conduct seismic surveys in 2000. Schoenwandt said the partnership’s permits west of Greenland’s capital of Nuuk could match Norway’s Ekofisk field, discovered in 1969 and expected to produce 3.5 billion barrels over its 25-year life span.

The bureau said many large geological structures have been identified and could contain “very large hydrocarbon accumulations.” In addition, there have been proven seepages of oil onshore, about 360 miles north of Nuuk.

Schoenwandt said oil has been produced in the area and there is no doubt there is more than one source for the oil.