BP Plc’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will keep the planet’s biggest pot of untapped oil and gas under the Arctic ice for now as regulators toughen drilling rules and demand better ways to handle spills. Royal Dutch Shell Plc has had plans to explore off Alaska halted by both U.S. authorities and a federal court ruling last week. Norway’s Statoil ASA faces government restrictions on drilling in Arctic waters, while BP, responsible for the Gulf spill that prompted scrutiny of offshore drilling, has put off developing its Liberty prospect in the Beaumont Sea until 2011.

“There will be new regulations and requirements that we need to take into account,” said Hege Marie Norheim, head of Arctic development at Statoil, Norway’s biggest energy producer. “We all want to learn from the Gulf of Mexico, and if that requires more time, we will take that time.” The delays come as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries restricts access to reserves, energy demand rises and easy-to-reach fields are depleted.

Arctic waters, where countries including Norway, Canada, Iceland, the U.S. and Russia claim territorial rights, may hold 90 billion barrels of crude, equivalent to about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered resources, according to a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey. No one can afford to rule out Arctic oil, said Patrice de Vivies, northern European exploration and production director for Total SA, Europe’s third-biggest oil company. Governments “will draw lessons from what happened to BP and they will check all the procedures,” de Vivies said. Courtesy:BLOOMBURG