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| World Marketplace |
Frozen Plunder
Lionel Beehner
11/01/2007
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The Claim Game
But the reaction from abroad was quite different. Some Western
officials labeled the expedition a stunt with no legal significance. "This isn’t
the 15th century," fumed Canadian foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay in an
interview with Canadian television network CTV. "You can’t go around the world
and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory.’" Some analysts
also question Moscow’s claims to the underwater mountain range. "It’s awfully
aggressive on Russia’s part," says Scott Borgerson, a fellow at the Washington,
D.C.–based Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Arctic geopolitics.
"It’s also a long shot, because I think the growing scientific evidence does not
support its assertion that the ridge is an extension of Russia."
Billions of dollars could be at stake if the Arctic’s energy resources are ever developed. |
Still, Russia’s expedition spurred other polar nations to
kick-start their own efforts to carve up the North Pole. Canada plans to spend
$7 billion on a new fleet of reinforced Arctic patrol vessels, as well as build
a deepwater port to service the vehicles. The United States has begun drawing up
legal arguments to extend its own economic zone near Alaska, while the Senate
looks like it might finally move to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention. The
Nordic countries also have ramped up their mapping efforts around the North
Pole. And a number of countries have flirted with deploying larger navies to the
region to check potential Russian expansion.
How this mad dash to divvy up the Arctic’s resources may affect
global energy markets remains unclear. For one, the region’s hydrocarbon
reserves may prove too technologically cumbersome to develop anytime soon. After
all, the cost of extracting oil and gas from shelves hundreds of feet thick and
miles under the ice is exorbitant. Then there are the obvious transportation
obstacles. Even if the ice cap were to completely thaw out, the oil and gas must
still be carried out by ship, not pipeline. "It’s easier to stick a pipe in the
ground in the Arabian Desert than it is to take an expensive oil tanker into a
hostile environment like the Arctic," Borgerson says.
The Russian Polar Bear
Of course, much will depend on Russia, whose natural gas
reserves are the world’s largest. Some speculate that Moscow may actually have
no interest in developing the Arctic seabed but, rather, fears competition from
the West. The flag plant, writes analyst Pavel Baev in the Jamestown
Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor,
"becomes not a claim for the right to
prospect and mine mineral resources but rather a ‘no-go’ sign that should stop
others from doing it." Others argue that Russia would be foolish not to exploit
the Arctic, which most Russians consider a natural part of their territory. "The
Kremlin wants to secure long-term dominance over global energy markets," writes
Russian analyst Vladimir Frolov in Global Research. "To ensure this,
Russia needs to find new sources of fuel, and the Arctic seems like the only
place left to go."
Indeed, as the ice cap melts away, the region around the North
Pole has emerged as the planet’s last—and largest—untapped reservoir of
hydrocarbons. And with energy reserves in Norway, Britain’s North Sea and the
United States drying up in the face of increasing global demand, the push to
develop the Arctic’s resources will only grow stronger. But energy sector
investors should exercise caution, as it may be many decades before the first
drop of oil is ever extracted from the Arctic. Things up there, after all, have
a habit of moving at glacial speeds.
Lionel Beehner is a freelance writer in New York.
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