The text presented is the final draft of the Report of the Resource Assessment Task Group to the Committee on Arctic Resources of the National Petroleum Council. The draft was submitted in July 1981. It provided a basis for further studies and analyses of real and potential problems by six other task groups during the remainder of that year. In December 1981, the National Petroleum Council submitted its report entitled "U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas" to the Secretary of Energy. The reader is referred to that publication for a complete synopsis of the work of all seven task groups.

This petroleum resource assessment is included in this volume to illustrate the organizational and data-handling problems encountered by the Resource Assessment Task Group and how these problems were overcome, as well as to present the results of our assessment of Arctic regions in which the petroleum industry will be actively exploring into the next millennium.