Who Owns the Arctic?

Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling

Andrei Pronin/Associated Press

The Prirazlomnaya oil platform was brought to the Arctic seaport of Murmansk, 906 miles north of Moscow, to be adjusted.

By ANDREW E. KRAMER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

New York Times, February 15, 2011

 Russia, where onshore oil reserves are slowly dwindling, last month signed an Arctic exploration deal with the British petroleum giant BP, whose offshore drilling prospects in the United States were dimmed by the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year. Other Western oil companies, recognizing Moscow’s openness to new ocean drilling, are now having similar discussions with Russia.

New oil from Russia could prove vital to world supplies in coming decades, now that it has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer, and as long as global demand for oil continues to rise.

But as the offshore Russian efforts proceed, the oil companies will be venturing where other big countries ringing the Arctic Ocean — most notably the United States and Canada — have been wary of letting oil field development proceed, for both safety and environmental reasons.

If we are a northern nation, support our northern peoples

Globe and Mail editorial, February 21, 2011

Canada's greatest claim to sovereignty in the North is the presence of the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples who live there.

Inuit to stand together at summit on Arctic resource development

Bob Weber, Canadian Press, Feb. 20, 2011

OTTAWA - Inuit leaders from the circumpolar world are to meet in Ottawa this week to hammer out a common front on the development of Arctic resources including offshore oil.

"We share the same ocean, the same air, the same land," said Edward Itta, mayor of Alaska's North Slope Borough. "We have a lot in common and we're trying to build better bonds and forge them into a strong united effort to get our voices and concerns heard."

Worst TB outbreak in Nunavut’s history a national problem: CMAJ

Bob Weber, Canadian Press, Feb. 14, 2011

Last year's outbreak of tuberculosis in Nunavut, the worst ever since the region became a territory, is a problem for the whole country, not just the North, says an editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

One of the editorial's authors calls the spread of a disease virtually unknown in the south an international embarrassment.

“We are a rich, developed nation that has the resources to solve the problem in Nunavut if we choose to employ them,” says Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, a respirologist at Toronto Western Hospital. “The fact that we have failed to do so, not just once but over a century, should be an embarrassment to every Canadian.”

Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report

(Reuters: Washington, DC, Feb 5, 2011) - Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.