Under the Ice: Exploring the Arctic’s Energy Resources, 1898–1985

Abstract

One of the most striking aspects of media’s reporting on the retreating and thinning Arctic sea ice has been the insistence that an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean creates vast new opportunities for the world’s energy supply. The absence of sea ice in summertime is presumed to offer new possibilities for extracting oil and gas reserves, estimated to contain 25 percent of the not yet discovered deposits of those resources, according to the US geological survey (Gautier et al., 2009; AMAP, 2007). Opinions differ as to the consequences: some argue that it offers a welcome relief in the context of global energy scarcity. Others believe it will contribute to delaying a necessary transition to renewable energy sources, while fueling geopolitical tensions in the Arctic region and beyond. The impression is that — real and imagined — energy resources in the Arctic Ocean have stimulated the overall Arctic discourse, boosting the awareness from the side of both governments and the general public of the changing Arctic and, more generally, of the long-term geophysical processes under debate in the context of climate change.