Editor's comment: “Estimates of the total undiscovered resources lying within the Arctic Circle are of academic interest only. They have no bearing on the short and medium term future of the oil and gas industry and oil and gas supplies. In any case there are numerous discovered accumulations of oil in Canada and Russia, as well as vast quantities of discovered gas in all the countries bordering the Arctic, all of which await development should permissions and capital be forthcoming. These are the areas where cash-rich oil companies (due to shortages of large scale opportunities elsewhere) are now concentrating their efforts. Perhaps the huge resources numbers provided by the USGS, which are completely speculative anyway, have current political ramifications for those countries with land claims on unresolved areas within the Arctic but, in practice, they do not affect the energy security (and environmental challenges) the world faces over the next two decades.”