Is it true that there might be oil in Antarctica?

Yes there might be, and this drilling that’s happening at the moment with ANDRILL, they don’t want to find oil. The last thing that they need is oil down in those sediments there popping out of the drill well. But it’s not likely, and there is two reasons for that. One of them is that Antarctica is too young. Really, in the five million year old sediments that they are going drill through, there isn’t anything in five million years likely to have formed oil. And the second thing is that, if you can remember back to the diagram of the drilling, all the layers were sloping. Well they were sloping upwards, so any oil would have got out, so there is nothing likely to be down there. So it’s too young, and the layers have been chosen because they’re safe. You’ve really got to think about what conditions were necessary for oil, and yes those conditions have occurred in Antarctica in the past, so there could be oil. There’s certainly coal, lots of it.