Lindsay Patterson

In my last post I wrote about Russia’s undersea flag-dropping stunts and their geological claim to Arctic resources. To be honest, the story startled me - I’d been thinking of the Arctic as an environmental sanctuary, where people would do anything to protect polar bears on their already dwindling sea ice.

At the very least, my vision was skewed. The Arctic is better thought of as an economic frontier. A few months ago I’d spoken to Jackie Grebmeier, an Arctic expert at the University of Tennessee, about Arctic ecosystems moving northwards as the region warms and the ice retreats. I called her again as she headed back to the lower 48 from Alaska to find out what she knew about the potential for oil and gas exploration in her area of expertise.

Grebmeier informed me that the exploration has been going on for decades, with each Arctic-bordering nation (the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Russia) tapping into significant resources off their respective coasts. US oil companies explored the Chukchi Sea, between Northern Alaska and Russia, over a decade ago. But actual drilling has not been viable until now. The Arctic is a harsh climate, and companies would have to build roads over the ice to connect the wells, and figure out a way to get the oil into the pipeline system. But rising oil costs and decreasing ice will make the process a lot more cost-effective and accessible. “For the Chukchi, it means you can maintain your drill rigs and the exploratory facilities for a longer period of time, because it’s a lot less expensive to deal with these platforms without ice than with ice,” Grebmeier said. She added that oil vessels are already standing by, waiting for the final environmental impact statements to be finished.

And in terms of environmental impact, it could be quite significant. The areas off the edge of the ice are very shallow, and are the most ecologically productive regions of the Arctic. The Northern Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea are the main migratory waters for the bowhead whale, which is the base of subsistence hunting for the Eskimos on Alaska’s North Slope. “The ecosystem is very tightly coupled up there,” Grebmeier said. “What that means is it’s very low on the food chain - walrus feed right off clams, that feed off plankton or bacteria, and the bowhead whale feed off of copepods which feed off phytoplankton.” In short, it’s a delicate system, and as Grebmeier and I discussed earlier, it’s already being affected by climate change.

“So you have both environmental change impacting them and then resource exploration. There is a potential, if it’s not managed or understood correctly, to have really a catastrophic effect,” she said. According to Grebmeier, the oil companies do not yet have a plan or equipment to clean up spills.

The Eskimo subsistence hunters are working with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to protect their interests in the bowhead whale and their environment. The lawsuits that have been filed are more about getting some say in the process rather than stopping the drilling. Grebmeier herself is most concerned about oil companies using the most background data and studies that they can to make the most informed decisions about their operations.

So it seems drilling is almost a done deal - but there are still other issues. As Kathryn Moran mentioned before, there will probably be an active debate around controlling the newly opened Northeast Passage, and also fisheries will be a huge resource as the ice opens up the ocean. My new outlook on the Arctic? It’s good to know that global warming has an upside for somebody.