No, the Russians haven’t found oil reserves in Antarctica

It may well be that the Commons, or a committee of it, has been told that there are oil and gas reserves newly found in Antarctica but it’s really not true.

Russia has found huge oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory, potentially leading to drilling in the protected region.

The reserves uncovered contain around 511bn barrels worth of oil, equating to around 10 times the North Sea’s output over the last 50 years.

The discovery, per Russian research ships, was revealed in evidence submitted to the Commons Environment Audit Committee last week. The committee was assessing questions regarding oil and gas research on ships owned by the Kremlin’s Rosgeo, the largest geological exploration company in Russia.

Antarctica is currently protected by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which prohibits all oil developments in the area.

A major reason they’re not reserves is that last sentence of that quote. This is also more than the mere pedantry we’re so fond around here. The world simply will not make sense if you don’t grasp these differences. We’ve explained them, at book length, here. To give a simpler version just in case any politician is about to believe these claims of Russian finds of reserves.

Just one note, fossil fuel and mineral reserve definitions are slightly different but the base ideas apply to both.

Resources and reserves are things that are man-made. Deposits are not, they’re natural. It’s vital to grasp this.

So, a mineral deposit is that there’s something there in that rock. OK, fine, it’s there. A resource is when that something has been studied enough, tested, that we become reasonably (and there are gradations of “reasonably” leading to gradations of resource) sure that we can lift that mineral (or fuel) from that deposit in both technical and economic terms. A mineral reserve is when we have proven that we can extract, using current technology, at current prices, make a profit doing so and we’ve the varied licences and rights to be able to do so. Effectively, a “mineral reserve” is something proven up to the standard that a bank will lend against it or a stock market allow capital to be raised against the claim. That proving document is often called a Bankable Feasibility Study - proof enough to convince the bankers to unlock the vault.

The mineral deposit simply is - but those resources and reserves are man-made things. Created by applying the attention and capital necessary to prove the volume, concentration, chemistry etc of the deposit up to that financeable stage.

The importance of this is that people like the Club of Rome, varied environmental wowsers and idiots everywhere look at the volume of reserves - the man made things - and conclude that’s all we can have. Run out of those and we all die. The very slightly more sophisticated apply the same misinsight to resources. Both are wholly and entirely wrong - humans are unlikely to run out of things made by humans. The limitation is deposits, not resources or reserves. But as we point out at book length (again) there’s no shortage of deposits that can be transformed by that human effort into resources and or reserves.

But back to oil in Antarctica. These findings are all at a very early stage as yet so they’re not reserves and it’s doubtful that they’re even resources. Deposits, yes they are. But most importantly - a reserve is defined, in part, by the legal ability to extract and as oil extraction in Antarctica is illegal then any oil in Antarctica is not a reserve, is it?

In just the same way that all that lovely gas trapped in the Bowland Shale is not a gas reserve because it’s not legal to go fracking in England, is it? That copper at Bristol Bay is not a reserve because saving the fishies means no legal right to mine it. For while humans create mineral reserves by their actions humans can also - and do - destroy reserves by their legal and permitting actions.