<Do you think if a ready, cheap source of high-grade crude oil were discovered in Antarctica that the US would keep it's hands off, treaty or no treaty?

Actually, there is probably a huge load of oil in Antarctica.

Based on accessibility factors, the Antarctic area widely considered to hold the greatest potential for oil exploitation is the continental shelf. One estimate postulates that fifty billion barrels of oil, an amount roughly equivalent to Alaska's entire estimated reserves, lies under the Weddell and Ross Seas alone. Other estimates by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' hydrometeorological service and the Japanese Plan Antarctic Survey give similar projections. One estimate goes so far as to put potential deposits as high as 203 billion barrels. This is staggering in light of the fact that the total historic domestic United States production to date is under 200 billion barrels. Additional studies have found heavy hydrocarbon residues in the Antarctic areas of McMurdo Sound and Bransfield Strait. The real question thus becomes not whether oil deposits exist, but whether they will be found, and if discovered, whether they can be economically extracted.



A 1978 study by the Rand Corporation found that four to ten supergiant oil fields remain undiscovered in the world. Since Antarctica has been explored with much less sophistication than the rest of the earth's surface area, and because its geologic characteristics suggest a strong possibility of hydrocarbon deposits, there is a good chance that at least one supergiant oil field lies somewhere beneath the vast Antarctic terrain.



So there you go. Oddly, considering what greedy, immoral bastards we Americans apparently are, we have not gone down yet and raped all the cute little penguins and run off with their resources.

However, the Russians have been poking around.

You know, you guys talk pretty big considering how you are currently wallowing in the comfort of a vast, technological society, backed by thousands of heavy industries. Alcaray, discussing the beauty of the lunar surface, says, "Heck, I used to backpack in the Sierras on a regular basis. One of the main draws is the beauty of the granite. It’s not jade or opal, either." Such beauty can be appreciated much more easily from the vantage point of a comfortable technical civilization. The beauty of a national park would begin to pale rapidly if you were dropped there without your nylon tent and other goodies, and had to survive on what you could find. How long before those rocks start losing their appeal? A week? A month? Six months? A mountain lion is a lot more beautiful on the other end of a telephoto camera lens.

You don't find a lot of environmentalists in the third world. They are too busy trying to grow food in dry, cracked ground, fighting diseases, and burying children. The environment is a lot less appealing when you spend most of your life trying to keep it from killing you.

Personally, I'm about ready to give up trying to compromise with radical environmentalists. If we can't exploit resources on a dead, airless, radiation-bathed rock in deep space, we might just as well just go back to where they want us, as third worlders or worse, naked in the woods, busting open rotten logs and hoping there are grubs in it. Or like the dinosaurs, just plain extinct, when something nasty eventually happens to this planet.