It's not a widely known fact that sales of new combustion engine cars peaked in 2017 and has been on a downward trend since then, while global EV sales have ~10x in the same time period.
So it seems like these new investments are in a race. Will they pay off before they become stranded assets? The Saudis and other middle east countries have the lowest production costs, so unless Alaska can somehow keep costs to ~$20/barrel, I would not bet on it.
Gasoline is only one of the byproducts of oil products a modern economy requires. Lubricants, diesel, nitrogen, and the list goes on - these are still all needed even if we convert to 100% EVs.
All non-transportation fuel uses account for a total of only 33% of crude oil consumption. Of the other 2/3rd, gasoline accounts for 43%. So yes, switching to EVs would have a massive impact, and probably put unconventional sources of oil (eg. Venezuela and Alberta) out of business. As for diesel, EV truck sales are starting to take off too.
Does that mean the US won't try to annex Canada and Greenland, after all?
When they say "The Arctic", you can often read that as being within the borders of Canada.
When you have something, and you lack the means to defend and assert that right - do you really have it? Canada has so defunded its military, that it's effectively an undefended nation.
Canada has so defunded its military
Not anymore.
[deleted]
The oil industry is dying and we are destroying the planet and a delicate ecosystem to harvest non-renewable energy. It should stay in the ground and be saved for future generations for an emergency, not to just power grossly oversized vehicles and social media content generation to manipulate people into buying things.
A truly idiotic investment when renewables are already cheaper than existing fossil fuel infrastructure (much less new infra)
This attitude misses the realities of scale bottlenecks and sunk costs.
If we ignore climate externalities, it makes sense to build solar as fast as we can and also pump oil, preferably for export.
> If we ignore climate externalities, it makes sense to build solar as fast as we can and also pump oil, preferably for export.
I appreciate that "externalities" is a term from economics. But its also worth remembering that there are no externalities when it comes to the global climate and atmospheric system. There is precisely one planetary atmosphere and we all share it.
It's important to keep in mind the scale. The US is producing around 15 million barrels of oil per day.
The projects mentioned in the article, combined, would be less than 6 months of the US production.
It's important for the locals in Alaska, but it's not going to change anything globally. Except maybe killing off a few endangered species and damaging the fragile ecosystem. But that's a small price to pay for oil companies' profits.
Even close to 6 months of US capacity is huge.
It is. But also not game-changing. And we don't have an infinite number of wildlife preserves that we can throw under the bus.
Arctic development is also expensive, and even the planned projects would have been impractical without already-existing infrastructure.
By that definition almost nothing is game changing?
The US is one of the most oil hungry countries on the planet, and even 3 months supply is a quarter. That would definitely move the needle on prices!
> By that definition almost nothing is game changing?
Yes. That's indeed correct. No amount of new oil discoveries or desperate attempts to put an oil well in every endangered species habitat is going to change the current trajectory.
The practically recoverable oil reserves in the US are estimated at around 150-200 billion barrels. That's about 30 years at the current production rate. Though not at the current price, a lot of reserves are economical only if the oil price is high enough.
So we'll still need to switch to something else in the long run, regardless of the CO2 pollution.
[dead]
What a truly amazing coincidence that failed Alaskan projects that can supply energy to Asian "allies" without maritime choke points become profitable again!
Just as the Hormuz double blockade is implemented and extended. The current peace talks are just theater. Expect new "peace talks" every two weeks for years to come.
Putin, Trump and the fracking mafia will be very happy.
Something's gotta power all those new AI data centers with massive capacity and it isn't wind and solar.
The Ember 2026 report[0] shows that 75% of new power generation in 2025 was from solar. Solar + wind were 99% of new generation capacity. Fossil fuel generation dropped for one of the first times ever (historical reductions were typically due to structural reasons like COVID or recession). In a first, renewable sources made more for the planet than coal.
Renewables are absolutely going to be powering the future. Recent events have done nothing but accelerate the transition as countries are going to run to reduce their petroleum dependencies.
Leveling up civilization and moving up the tech tree requires orders of magnitude more energy.
It's unlikely to be oil either. Sometimes it's natural gas.
It really ought to be solar+batteries. It'd be slightly more expensive to build up-front than oil-based solutions, but probably not much and the companies building these data centers have the money to pay for that.
not in a petrostate anyways
Right, under Trump the US has become a full-blown petrostate. We may as well start calling him the Emir.
It's not a widely known fact that sales of new combustion engine cars peaked in 2017 and has been on a downward trend since then, while global EV sales have ~10x in the same time period.
So it seems like these new investments are in a race. Will they pay off before they become stranded assets? The Saudis and other middle east countries have the lowest production costs, so unless Alaska can somehow keep costs to ~$20/barrel, I would not bet on it.
Gasoline is only one of the byproducts of oil products a modern economy requires. Lubricants, diesel, nitrogen, and the list goes on - these are still all needed even if we convert to 100% EVs.
All non-transportation fuel uses account for a total of only 33% of crude oil consumption. Of the other 2/3rd, gasoline accounts for 43%. So yes, switching to EVs would have a massive impact, and probably put unconventional sources of oil (eg. Venezuela and Alberta) out of business. As for diesel, EV truck sales are starting to take off too.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/trends-in...
Does that mean the US won't try to annex Canada and Greenland, after all?
When they say "The Arctic", you can often read that as being within the borders of Canada.
When you have something, and you lack the means to defend and assert that right - do you really have it? Canada has so defunded its military, that it's effectively an undefended nation.
Canada has so defunded its military
Not anymore.
The oil industry is dying and we are destroying the planet and a delicate ecosystem to harvest non-renewable energy. It should stay in the ground and be saved for future generations for an emergency, not to just power grossly oversized vehicles and social media content generation to manipulate people into buying things.
A truly idiotic investment when renewables are already cheaper than existing fossil fuel infrastructure (much less new infra)
This attitude misses the realities of scale bottlenecks and sunk costs.
If we ignore climate externalities, it makes sense to build solar as fast as we can and also pump oil, preferably for export.
> If we ignore climate externalities, it makes sense to build solar as fast as we can and also pump oil, preferably for export.
I appreciate that "externalities" is a term from economics. But its also worth remembering that there are no externalities when it comes to the global climate and atmospheric system. There is precisely one planetary atmosphere and we all share it.
It's important to keep in mind the scale. The US is producing around 15 million barrels of oil per day.
The projects mentioned in the article, combined, would be less than 6 months of the US production.
It's important for the locals in Alaska, but it's not going to change anything globally. Except maybe killing off a few endangered species and damaging the fragile ecosystem. But that's a small price to pay for oil companies' profits.
Even close to 6 months of US capacity is huge.
It is. But also not game-changing. And we don't have an infinite number of wildlife preserves that we can throw under the bus.
Arctic development is also expensive, and even the planned projects would have been impractical without already-existing infrastructure.
By that definition almost nothing is game changing?
The US is one of the most oil hungry countries on the planet, and even 3 months supply is a quarter. That would definitely move the needle on prices!
> By that definition almost nothing is game changing?
Yes. That's indeed correct. No amount of new oil discoveries or desperate attempts to put an oil well in every endangered species habitat is going to change the current trajectory.
The practically recoverable oil reserves in the US are estimated at around 150-200 billion barrels. That's about 30 years at the current production rate. Though not at the current price, a lot of reserves are economical only if the oil price is high enough.
So we'll still need to switch to something else in the long run, regardless of the CO2 pollution.
[dead]
What a truly amazing coincidence that failed Alaskan projects that can supply energy to Asian "allies" without maritime choke points become profitable again!
Just as the Hormuz double blockade is implemented and extended. The current peace talks are just theater. Expect new "peace talks" every two weeks for years to come.
Putin, Trump and the fracking mafia will be very happy.
Something's gotta power all those new AI data centers with massive capacity and it isn't wind and solar.
The Ember 2026 report[0] shows that 75% of new power generation in 2025 was from solar. Solar + wind were 99% of new generation capacity. Fossil fuel generation dropped for one of the first times ever (historical reductions were typically due to structural reasons like COVID or recession). In a first, renewable sources made more for the planet than coal.
Renewables are absolutely going to be powering the future. Recent events have done nothing but accelerate the transition as countries are going to run to reduce their petroleum dependencies.
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...
Actually lately it's been Hydro and Solar.[0] A little of natural gas, and thankfully a ton less coal.
[0] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/soaring-solar-and-a-...
Leveling up civilization and moving up the tech tree requires orders of magnitude more energy.
It's unlikely to be oil either. Sometimes it's natural gas.
It really ought to be solar+batteries. It'd be slightly more expensive to build up-front than oil-based solutions, but probably not much and the companies building these data centers have the money to pay for that.
not in a petrostate anyways
Right, under Trump the US has become a full-blown petrostate. We may as well start calling him the Emir.