Who Owns the Arctic?

Russia’s Norilsk Plans to Invest $370 Million to Double Arctic Shipments

Ilya Khrennikov, Bloomberg, June 28, 2011

OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, the largest Russian mining company, plans to spend $370 million to double its shipments across the Arctic Ocean by 2016 as global warming allows the route to rival the journey through the Suez Canal.

Arctic naval facility years from completion

The Canadian Press, May 29, 2011

Environmental and funding concerns are adding years to the construction of an Arctic naval port considered crucial to enforcing Canadian control of the Northwest Passage.

The Nanisivik port in Nunavut was originally supposed to be at least partially up and running by next summer, following a promise made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007.

But no construction is planned for this summer and defence officials admit that the refuelling station, intended to give the navy a permanent presence at the eastern gate of the contested passage, won't be operating for years.

Canada boosts claim to Northwest Passage

Bernard Simon, Financial Times, May 11, 2011

A plan to open up northern Quebec to resource development will help bolster Canada’s disputed claims to the Northwest Passage, according to Jean Charest, premier of the French-speaking province.

“With global warming, a northern route is going to open up just on the tip of northern Quebec by 2030 or 2040,” Mr Charest told the Financial Times.

The Inuit prepare to defend their rights

The Economist, March 3, 2011

Ottawa - WHEN in the Arctic, you should at least treat your host well. Royal Dutch Shell, an oil giant, had to learn this the hard way when planning to drill exploration wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska a couple of years ago. The firm had spent $84m on offshore leases and had satisfied regulators. But it failed to win over the Inupiat, an Inuit group. They worried that icebreakers and drill ships would hurt the bowhead whales on which they depend. Their leaders and environmental groups sued American regulators for not following a 1970 law on environmental impacts. This allowed them to wrest a number of concessions from Shell, including a commitment to stop all offshore operations during the bowhead migration and hunt, should drilling ever proceed.

Climate Change, the Arctic and Russia’s National Security

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, 25 March 2010, Pravda.ru

What does Prime Minister Stephen Harper have in common with the Canadian Minister of Defence? He shares a sinister, hypocritical and belligerent discourse bordering on the lunatic fringe of the international community. Yet Canada’s new-found megalomania is the least of Russia’s worries: How can climate change in the Arctic threaten her national security?

An iron road across the permafrost

A Canadian iron mine company seeks to build a 143-kilometre private railway on Baffin Island

Oliver Moore, Globe & Mail, September 4, 2008

It will be the world's most northerly railway, a private line snaking across the permafrost and rock of Baffin Island at a projected cost of $10-million per kilometre.

The ambitious project is part of a plan to tap iron-ore deposits 900 kilometres northwest of Iqaluit. The plan is subject to regulatory approval and securing financing, but preliminary drilling is already under way, say officials of Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Baffinland confirms vast iron ore play

Andy Hoffman, Globe & Mail, February 20, 2008

Call it an overnight success story more than 45 years in the making.

Amid skyrocketing prices for iron ore, Baffinland Iron Ore Mines Corp. confirmed yesterday that its Mary River project in Nunavut, first discovered in 1962, is one of the largest undeveloped iron ore deposits in the world, containing 365 million tonnes of proven and probable reserves.

Arctic gold rush drives evolution of ice vessels

An urge to exploit untapped riches of the region are seeing ever more ice resistant ships emerging

David Tinsley, Lloyd's List, January 22, 2009

GLOBAL demand for oil, gas and mineral resources, coupled with Russian economic and industrial will, are the primary drivers of initiatives to provide new solutions to the considerable technical and operational challenges of developing year-round trade in ice-covered or ice-prone waters.

Weststar acquires six Nunavut coal licences

2009-01-23 06:35 ET - News Release

Mr. Mitchell Adam reports

WESTSTAR ACQUIRES NUNAVUT COAL PROPERTY

Weststar Resources Corp. has acquired, subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval, a 100-per-cent interest in six coal exploration licence applications, located on the Bache peninsula, Ellesmere island, Nunavut. The exploration licences cover an area of approximately 450 square kilometres (45,000 hectares), with the final land package to be determined at the time of granting of the exploration licences. A general location map of the exploration licences is available on the company's website. The company is in the process of creating a wholly owned subsidiary, which will hold and manage this and any subsequent arctic coal acquisitions.

Northerners eyeing new riches

Oil, gas, gold, uranium. Immense wealth is there for the taking — if we could get it out of there. Global warming can make that happen

Ed Struzik, Toronto Star, November 24, 2007

CAPE CHURCHILL, Man.–Two polar bears cautiously approach each other on the fresh sea ice off the coast of Hudson Bay.

Just before the bears meet, they stand and dance around one another. Then they lock up like a pair of Sumo wrestlers, stand back, then start swatting each other. Vicious as it looks, all these young males are doing is playing.

With me watching the scene is John Gunter, marketing director of Frontiers North, the tundra buggy/adventure tour company that brought me out here with Robert Buchanan, the head of Polar Bear International, a non-profit conservation group. In the long, economically troubled history of Churchill, polar bears, Polar Bear International and adventure tour companies like Frontiers North have been the only steady sources of income for this closely knit community of 1,000 Inuit, Cree, Metis and non-native residents.