Department of Geosciences
North Dakota State University
Geology 300:
ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGY
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Question:
How long would oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) last if the U.S. started pumping it?

This worksheet asks you to make some "back of the envelope" estimations, sometimes based on scant data. I'm not so much interested in the "right answer" as in evidence of problem solving and logical thinking. Lundgren (chapter 11) presents some background on fossil fuels. A hint: the USGS (http://www.usgs.gov) has estimated the crude oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Assume all the gasoline would be used in cars.

Intermediate questions that you might need to answer are:

• What are the estimated crude oil reserves in the ANWR?
• How much petroleum is lost in the conversion from petroleum to gasoline?
• How much gasoline is used by cars every year in the US?

(Acknowledgement to Herendeen, R., 1998, Ecological Numeracy. NY:Wiley.)