In the previous video, I reviewed oil and natural gas production in Russia. Clearly, there's a great yield going on there. But now let's turn our attention to Alaska, the Beaufort and, Chukchi Seas. We're really here talking about the United States. The key points here is the United States is the world's largest oil producer, and it's eyeing the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in the Alaska North Slope for more production. Now, key thing here, very important, Prudhoe Bay production is now far below its peak. This is off course on the Alaska North Slope, and increased offshore development is rather uncertain. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, something that's been in the news now and again, is highly controversial, so situation with Russia, yeah. They're going gung-ho on production. The situation with the United States with respect to the Arctic seems to be a great deal less clear. It's more uncertain. Now as I showed in the previous video, this is a table that illustrates the leading oil producers. There in the red box, I'm showing the top four, and there's United States sitting out at the top. Almost 18 million barrels per day, or about 18 percent of the world's total output per day. Again, I'm showing the map here from the USGS, United States Geologic Survey, and it's showing undiscovered oil or where there should be a lot of oil. Remember that oil and natural gas tend to be found in the same regions. That blue oval is just focusing on the Alaska North Slope and the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas where you'd see that some areas are in a pretty bright green where there should be a lot. Here's the Alaska pipeline. I've been along the Alaska pipeline quite a few times in my day just because it tends to parallel the Dalton highway which goes all the way up to Prudhoe Bay. There it is. There's the Alaska pipeline and it's quite an impressive feature. A lot of it is built on permafrost. Of course there's concern, as the permafrost warms and thaws that it could become unstable. Now a little history here, the pipeline was built between 1975 and 1977. And that was in response to the 1973 oil crisis; driving development of oil resources to the Prudhoe Bay area that's on the large slope Beaufort Sea coast. Prudhoe Bay oil was first discovered in 1968. It goes back away, so then we started to produce it and you had to build a pipeline to take the stuff out. Pipeline is privately owned. Now it carries all oil from Prudhoe Bay all the way down to Valdez. It is one of the world's largest pipeline systems, 11 pumping stations. You have to keep pressures in the pipe high enough so that the oil will flow. They are very impressive, these pumping stations. The pipeline can carry two million barrels of oil a day. Remember a barrel is a 42 gallons, it's not 55 gallons. It can carry two million barrels per day. But at this point it operates at just a fraction of that capability because production has really been going down. This map here shows the pipeline and the different pumping stations. Pumping station 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and, 12, all the way down to Valdez. It really is a very impressive system. Here's a question, how much oil is actually pumped from Prudhoe Bay? These are the numbers I was able to find for 2017. I'm sure they've changed somewhat. But the answer is only, for the numbers I had, about 280,000 barrels per day. Remember the peak capacity, the capacity is about two million a day. It's really just a fraction of that, because production along Prudhoe Bay has really been going down. But there's still a lot going on, that's for sure. I mean, there's still a hell of lots going on. Here's the housing that you see at Prudhoe Bay. I stayed at this place one night. It was rather grim. Let's say there's a culture there that I was certainly not a part of. You can see this is a building built properly for a permafrost environment. See how it's elevated off the ground. Because you want to circulate that cold air underneath, you wouldn't want to put a building like this and build it right on the ground or try and dig a foundation. That's just not going to work, but that's the sort of housing you see if you're up there working in the oil field. Now here's another question, is oil production already occurring offshore in the Beaufort Sea? The answer is most certainly yes. Here's an example; here's Northstar Island, an artificial island, and this one's 12 miles northwest of Prudhoe Bay out in the ocean. They actually built an artificial island to drill for oil. Now, a lot of what's going on in Prudhoe Bay and along the Alaska North slope and in the shallow of Beaufort Sea is, I mean, there's all kinds of controversy on this. For example, here's one that stemming from a NOAA, National Marine Fishery Services announcement in November of 2019, that a company called HilCorp Alaska LLC had gotten permission to disturb marine mammals in building the artificial island as the operations center for its offshore Liberty field. This map here is just showing where that offshore Liberty field is and other oil leases, those in those little white squares have been opened up. There's other issues going on. Now, Royal Dutch Shell abandoned Chukchi sea operations or exploration in 2015. They said, well, they were disappointed in what they found. Maybe they'll be back. All of these issues in drilling in the Arctic, a lot of it boils down to prices. What are the prices for oil and natural gas? If prices are high, then you can afford to go up there and maybe get deposits which are not as easy to get, but if prices are cheap, maybe it's not going to be viable. Just one thing to remember, there's really very little or no natural gas produced on the North Slope of Beaufort Sea. It's really just oil that's produced. I think they flare off a lot of the natural gas. Now, the other big controversial issue is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now this is the largest wildlife refuge in our country in the United States. I shouldn't say in our country, because this is a very international thing. It's the largest wildlife refuge in the United States. It contains a greater variety of plant and animal life than any other refuge above the Arctic circle. Questions of whether we should drill for oil in the wildlife refuge, that has been going on for a long time, all the way since 1977. A lot of the issues center on this, what's known as the "1002 area" in the coastal plain. Issues relate to the amount of oil that might be recoverable. Of this issues, that this is of calving ground of the porcupine caribou herd. There's a threat to the lives of indigenous peoples. Now, in 2019, the United States administration wants to see the entire coastal plain of Alaska open to gas and oil exploration. As you can imagine, among many other groups, this is raising quite a hullabaloo. This map is showing where the wildlife refuge is, and the national petroleum reserve you see on the left. Imagine the orange is that "1002 area" where a lot of the controversy lies. Also in the blue dots you're seeing, basically, that's the Northern margin of the Brooks Range. You see that a lot of the Arctic wildlife refuge is really South of the major spine of the Brooks Range, some of it is to the North. I found this picture online of the wildlife reserve. Someone looking out over it; this is beautiful. I've not been there. I've been to a lot of other places on the Alaska North Slope, but not to the wildlife refuge. But this is just a picture looking down, just a beautiful scene. Obviously, you can really understand why people really want to protect that. But of course, there is economic needs. We have to face reality. You got to find oil and natural gas somewhere. So it's another case where there are no easy solutions. All we have are intelligent choices. Porcupine caribou herd. This is an area showing all those white dots down there, that's part of the caribou herd, so the long caribou out there. You can see in this picture the Brooks Range, and the background. Presumably, it looks like this is looking North. Now, how large is this porcupine caribou herd? The point is it's big. It's real big. Around 200,000 animals. You can never get an exact count of these sorts of things, but there are many caribou in the Porcupine caribou herd. Just very impressive migrations of the herd. This is just a natural part of our environment, and you can see very much why people would like this preserved. The conclusion here is in terms of oil and natural gas production in the Beaufort, Chukchi Seas, the Alaska North Slope, it's a controversial thing. In terms of the production of this, it's much less sure that you're seeing in Russia; where Russia's going all gung-ho on production. What's going on in the United States? The picture is still rather fuzzy. Thank you.
