Who Owns the Arctic?

Toward a Canada-Russia Axis in the Arctic

Why Canada and Russia should unite to support a common position against the US in advancing certain Arctic claims

Michael Byers, Global Brief, February 6, 2012

Unlike the Antarctic, a continent surrounded by oceans, the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents. Most of the Arctic Ocean coastline belongs to the world’s two largest countries – Russia and Canada – each of which also owns territory on either side of a series of contested, and increasingly ice-free, Arctic straits.

Canada considers the Northwest Passage to be internal waters. Russia takes the same view of the Northern Sea Route. Both countries recognize that the thinning and melting of the Arctic sea ice pose environmental and security risks at the same time that they create economic opportunities in the form of increased shipping and access to natural resources. Both take the view that their domestic laws provide the best bases for protecting and developing their Northern coastlines. And both face a single, common source of opposition to their claims – namely, the US. All of this should beg the question: why have Russia and Canada not bolstered their respective positions by recognizing each other’s legal positions?

The Russian Bear dominates the Arctic

To continue its dominance on the Arctic, the Russian Bear needs the help of foreign markets, investors and technologies.

Michael Byers, Al Jazeera.com, 3 January 2011

Vancouver, Canada - In the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, Marko Ramius, the rogue captain of a Soviet nuclear missile submarine, evades the US and Soviet navies by maneuvering deftly through a narrow and winding - but precisely charted - mid-Atlantic trench.

In real life, the Soviet navy's charting efforts extended to the heart of the NATO-controlled Canadian Arctic. Soviet-era charts on board the Akademik Ioffe, an ice-strengthened ship owned by the Russian Academy of Sciences and chartered by a Canadian eco-cruise company, show many more depth soundings in the Northwest Passage than do comparable Canadian charts.

For the full text, see: Russian Bear

Russia pulling ahead in the Arctic

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks at a transportation conference in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. (Nov. 2011)

Michael Byers, Toronto Star, December 29, 2011

NOVOSIBIRSK, RUSSIA—“Canada has a good working relationship with Russia with respect to the Arctic. There is no likelihood of Arctic states going to war.”

The Russian foreign ministry’s representative in Siberia smiles as he quotes the Canadian Prime Minister, as reported in a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

Although Stephen Harper never expected that his conversation with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen would be made public, the analysis was entirely correct. Here in Novosibirsk (pop. 1.5 million), people are more interested in trade and investment opportunities than geopolitical conspiracies.

The dragon looks north

China grows hungry for Arctic resources and shipping routes as northern ice melts.

China has already invested $25bn to build an oil pipeline from Sibera [EPA] Michael Byers, AlJazeera.com, December 28, 2011

Vancouver, Canada - As the Arctic sea-ice melts, the Dragon looks to the north. China has a voracious appetite for oil, natural gas and minerals - of which the Arctic has plenty. The world's newest superpower is also the world's largest shipping nation, and well positioned to take advantage of shorter routes across an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean.

There is no unclaimed land available in the Arctic, because Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States carved up the region centuries ago. But this fact doesn't discourage a resource-hungry China, which knows it can buy the access it needs.

Chinese state-owned companies have already invested tens of billions of dollars in Canada's northern tar sands. Three years ago, the Chinese government lent a Russian company $25bn so that it could build an oil pipeline from Siberia to China, which now carries 300,000 barrels per day. ...

For the full text, see: The dragon looks north 

Melting Arctic brings new opportunities

Changing conditions in the far north have sparked excitement and unfounded concerns over potential conflict.

Michael Byers, Al Jazeera.com , December 22, 2011

Vancouver, Canada - "For the first time in my life, I'm trying to find ice."

Alex MacIntyre was standing on the bridge of the Akademik Ioffe as the Russian-flagged ice-strengthened cruise ship traversed the Northwest Passage last summer. A Canadian ice-pilot with four decades of Arctic experience, MacIntyre remembers when the route was choked with sea-ice that was 10 to 15 metres thick.

Twenty-two ships sailed through the Northwest Passage in 2011. On the other side of the Arctic Ocean, 34 ships traversed Russia's Northern Sea Route.

The Arctic Ocean, which exists in a precarious balance between ice and water, is more susceptible to climate change than anywhere else on Earth. A so-called "feedback loop" exacerbates the situation: As climate change warms the air and melts the highly reflective ice from above, it exposes more dark ocean water which acts like a solar sponge, absorbing more energy from the sun and melting the remaining ice from below.

For the full text, see: Melting Arctic brings new opportunities

Melting Arctic ice clears the way for supertanker voyages

Scandinavian shipowners say cargo routes through the Arctic, made possible by warmer temperatures, would save money and emissions

John Vidal, The Guardian, 5 October 2011

The image above was made from observations collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer and shows the extent of sea ice melt. The yellow outline shows the median minimum ice extent for 1979/2000. Photograph: Aqua/NASA

Supertankers and giant cargo ships could next year travel regularly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic to save time, money and emissions, say Scandinavian shipowners.

Asian juggernaut eyes our ‘golden’ waterways

Michael Byers, Globe and Mail, 29 August 2011

“We are men of action. We get things done.” With those words, Ahmed Ali Al-Subaey, the Saudi-born CEO of South Korea’s largest oil company, set the tone for a conference on Arctic shipping held, significantly, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Most of the world’s cargo ships traverse the Pacific as they service the economic powerhouses of Asia. Fully 77 per cent of China’s oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. In Beijing, this strategic weakness is referred to as the “Malacca dilemma.”

Some of the larger vessels can’t fit into the Panama Canal and must loop around the bottom of South America. Still more loop around Africa to avoid the pirate-infested approaches to the Suez Canal. The added distances impose unwelcome costs – in fuel, salaries and foregone business.

Now, all eyes are turning toward another entrance to the Pacific: the relatively deep, wide, pirate-free Bering Strait. To the east, the Northwest Passage offers a 7,000-kilometre shortcut between Northeast Asia and the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. To the west, the Northern Sea Route offers a 10,000-kilometre shortcut to Europe.

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.

New warning on Arctic sea ice melt

By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News, April 7, 2011

 

Scientists who predicted a few years ago that Arctic summers could be ice-free by 2013 now say summer sea ice will probably be gone in this decade.

The original prediction, made in 2007, gained Wieslaw Maslowski's team a deal of criticism from some of their peers.

Now they are working with a new computer model - compiled partly in response to those criticisms - that produces a "best guess" date of 2016.

Russia's Arctic Opening

As Moscow prepares to open the icy waters of the Arctic to offshore drilling, dangers abound. But it's also a moment of opportunity to get things right.

CHARLES EMMERSON, FOREIGN POLICY, MARCH 30, 2011

When it comes to Russian oil and gas, major deals with foreign companies are a good deal like London buses: Just when you're about to give up waiting for one to come along, three or four turn up at once.

Already, 2011 has been a bumper year.