Baffin Bay Geological Survey has estimated that at least 13% of the world's undiscovered oil deposits and 30% of the world's undiscovered gas pockets are located in the Arctic, with the seas around Greenland potentially holding large amounts of natural gas and lesser amounts of crude oil and natural-gas liquids. Accordingly, the Greenland authorities have offered a large number of off-shore concessions for potential hydrocarbon (oil and gas) extraction. The largest concession-areas are located in seas west of Greenland; primarily in Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait, but with several smaller concessions in the Greenland Sea in the east also. Baffin Bay
Foveaux Strait strait is about 130 km long (from Ruapuke Island to Little Solander Island), and it widens (from 14 km at Ruapuke Island to 50 km at Te Waewae Bay) and deepens (from 20 to 120 m) from east to west. The strait lies within the continental shelf area of New Zealand, and was probably dry land during the Pleistocene epoch. Captain Cook sighted Foveaux Strait during his circumnavigation of the South Island in March 1770, but decided to hide it. He was operating during the period of intense Anglo-French rivalry that filled the twelve years between Britain's success in the