From Scientific American:
Nations scramble to claim their share of the petroleum riches trapped deep within the Arctic seabed as global warming loosens that ocean's icy grip on its bounty.
As a nuclear-powered icebreaker crunched through 10 feet of August ice at the North Pole, Russian sailors readied two deepwater submersibles for their two-and-a-half-mile descent. Dubbed Mir 1 and Mir 2 (mir meaning “world”), the subs were aptly named—their deployment was about to catch the world’s attention. A hole opened in the ship’s wake, and the subs were lowered. At the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, one sub took seabed samples, the ostensible purpose of the mission, while the other deposited a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag, symbolically claiming this undersea turf for its homeland.
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My Comment: There is still a considerable amount of ice up north .... and it will be there for decades .... if not longer. Because of arctic conditions (it is still very cold up there), it will also be decades before technology can catch up to exploit the resources at an economical cost .... if even then.
1 comment:
While true there is a considerable amount of ice up north, it is melting faster than anyone predicted. More importantly, new technology that can operate in the Arctic's extreme environment is around the corner. Either way, "freezing" jurisdictional claims sooner can prevent exploitation of the commons.
An Arctic "land" grab is a dangerous proposition given the twin bombs posed by peak oil and climate change. Drilling in the Arctic only delays a concerted response to these issues among industrialized countries with interests in the High North. Though a difficult proposition, the establishment of a conservation regime over oil resources in the Arctic commons offers another way forward:
http://www.e-ir.info/?p=460
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