Human Impacts on Antarctica and Threats to the Environment- Mining and Oil

The Antarctic Treaty was signed by 45 countries in 1961. the treaty was formed to say that antarctica was to be left alone for scientific experiments and not to be used for the resources that are in antarctic. mining and oil drilling is not allowed in antarctica.

Information From: http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/threats_mining_oil.htm , Author and publisher not found.

Mining in Antarctica is aboslutely prohibited due to the Anatcrtic treaty. Antarctica is loaded with minerals, but the quality is very low. Iron ore in Antarctica is 30% iron, iron ore less than 60% is considered useless because of the low amount of iron in it. Better quality iron ore can be found else where. There is a supply of coal in Antarctica but like the iron ore it is of very low quality, the coal found in Antarctica has high moisture, high ash content and is thin and in broken bands. There is available minerals in Amntarctica but the are worthless another thing that makes them unwanted is the isolation in Anatarctica.

There have been rocks in Antarctica reportedly containing oil or gas, even though this is the case no one has ever actualy drilled into a rock to find this out. Authorities have estimated that it would cost over US$100 per barrel to get oil from Antarctica. Current oil prices are less than US$100 (March 2011). There is no use for mining oil or gas in Antarctica at the moment anyway there are over 30 years of oil reserves left, it might even last 100 years therefor we dont need antarcticas gas or oil yet anyway.