Arctic Thaw Creates an Exploration Scramble

Arctic thaw due to global warming is opening up more passages of the Arctic to sea exploration and raising security concerns. Beneath the the frozen region north of the Arctic Circle lies a huge reserve of about 20% of untapped fossil fuels and 33% of untapped natural gas in the world. As estimated by the US Geological Survey, this could amount to be possibly 90 billion barrels of oil, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Arctic thaw threatens to complicate relations between countries with competing claims to Arctic territory, as thawing makes possible exploration for oil and natural gas. (Arctic Thaw:Icebergs and Glacier at Rothera: NOC)

There has been feasibility studies on oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. These have faced oppositions from environmentalists who express worries over potential risks and damages to environment, land stability, marine habitat and wildlife. The use of seismic waves during testing and drilling by ExxonMobil has proven to be disruptive and harmful to whales which is believed to have caused the beaching of more than one hundred whales.

On an international scale, as the melting polar ice makes accessible the once-frozen shipping lanes, it also creates an exploration scramble that poses new security challenges, threatening to complicate already delicate relations between stake holding countries. Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland are rushing to establish early military presence in an effort to lay claim to a slice of this lucrative economic cake. Claims would include rights of drilling, natural reserves, shipping lanes and territorial sovereignty in the vast expanse of the Arctic.

Countries like Russia, Denmark and Canada are working hard to establish a geological linkage of their seabed with the seabed below the North Pole as part of the Eurasian continental shelf, called the Lomonosov Ridge.

President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, released Russia’s new National Security Strategy on May 2009, valid till 2020. With regards to solving international energy security issue inclusive of the Arctic, “With the ongoing competition for resources, attempts to use military force to solve emerging problems cannot be excluded, and this might destroy the balance of forces on Russia's and its allies' borders.” (Russian President Dmitry Medvedev with Vladimir Putin at a parade in Red Square)

 

Eight days before the former U.S. President G. Bush left office, he issued a directive which states America's right to freedom of navigation through the Northwest Passage and which disputes Canadian ownership of parts of the Beaufort Sea. The Americans have been concerned about security threats in the Arctic. (Pic: Former U.S. President George Bush)

Canada has on Feb 2009, announced that the government is finally militarizing its Arctic. The Conservative government has promised to spend billions of dollars building 6 - 8 offshore patrol vessels capable of breaking up first-year ice; the establishment of a refueling site and the construction of a new ice-breaker costing $720-million. The Canadian government is confident of presenting a convincing legal case that there is no history of the Northwest Passage being used as an international waterway, in an obvious effort to shun away competing claims of other nations.

NATO sees an urgent need to establish political and economic cooperation among these Arctic coastal states to alleviate any chance of military conflicts. On January 2009 NATO's commanders and lawmakers gathered in Reykjavik, Iceland  to assess the possible risks, challenges and the prospect of new standoffs in the region's icy waters accompanying the Arctic's thaw.