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Future of Arctic Offshore Oil and Gas as Sea Ice Thins under Climate Change

Presentation Date
Monday, December 12, 2022 at 1:45pm - Monday, December 12, 2022 at 1:55pm
Location
Online Only
Authors

Author

Abstract

Climate change has led to sea ice loss, which will continue to open up new regions in the Arctic for human activities such as oil and gas extraction. The undiscovered oil and gas in the Arctic are assessed to be 13% and 30% of the world’s total undiscovered oil and gas, respectively. Over 85% of both the undiscovered oil and gas in the Arctic are offshore. However, the future of oil and gas extraction in the Arctic is unclear given uncertainties in sea ice loss and demand. Here, we incorporate the uncertainty of sea ice projections from CMIP6 and the seasonality of sea ice thickness for considerations of offshore oil and gas extraction technology implementation and the associated cost estimations. We then implement Arctic offshore oil and gas resource-reserve technologies in an integrated assessment model to explore the spatial and temporal patterns of Arctic offshore oil and gas future production under climate change and human efforts to reach a low-carbon future. We find that climate change will have a relatively large impact on Arctic offshore oil production, compared to gas, and that the impacts vary greatly by region. Both timing and production rates vary by region and by scenarios (Fig.1). For example, under RCP8.5, most offshore units near Alaska, USA are projected to produce after 2075, while units north of western Russia are projected to produce before that. This is mainly due to differences in the spatial and temporal patterns of sea ice loss. Surprisingly, in a global low-carbon future, Arctic offshore oil production increases due to reduction of “dirtier” unconventional oil production and depletion of non-Arctic crude oil over the century. Both Arctic offshore oil and gas are projected to have little effect on the global and regional fossil fuel markets under all scenarios.

Arctic offshore oil production charts.
Category
Global Environmental Change
Funding Program Area(s)