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Risk and reward
As climate change redraws the map of the world’s North Polar Region, opportunities
and challenges abound in equal measure. Can Arctic resources be developed without
endangering the ecosystem and human lives? That’s the trillion-dollar question.
Here’s a quick overview of what’s at stake
By Alec Bruce and Dawn Chafe
An estimated 15,000-30,000
icebergs are calved annually
from Greenland glaciers.
Beautiful to behold, icebergs
are a serious threat to offshore
drill platforms and shipping.
Sub-zero temperatures, dangerous
wind storms, year-round sea ice
and extreme isolation make the
Arctic a forbidding and treacherous
operational environment.
The Arctic subsea is thought to hold an estimated
160 billion barrels of oil and 30% of the world’s
undiscovered natural gas reserves. Most of these
fossil-fuel resources are considered commercially
accessible, as they are believed to rest relatively close
(within 500 meters) to the surface of the ocean floor.
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Atlantic Business Magazine | September/October 2016
ARCTIC: ENVIRONMENT
Since 1975, sea ice has thinned on an annualized average of 65%:
bad news for the northern ecosystem (and, some say, global climate
conditions); great news for transportation. Experts predict ice breakers
could make the Arctic accessible to year-round shipping by 2050.
There are approximately 16,000 polar bears in Canada’s Far
North and sea ice is integral to their survival. Polar bears
hunt by stalking seals across ice and waiting for seals to
emerge from breathing holes in the ice. Living on thin ice
limits their ability to hunt. While the animals are not yet
considered endangered in this country, the Government of
Canada has increased monitoring in recent years.
Other Arctic species struggling to
adapt to thinning ice and global
warming include: caribou, narwhal,
bowhead whale, beluga and walrus.
The deepest offshore oil well to date was drilled by
the Deepwater Horizon in 2009, in the Tiber Oil Field
southeast of Texas (10,684 m). The rig exploded in
2010, triggering the largest offshore oil spill in U.S.
history and endangering thousands of species.
With an average depth of 1,038 m,
the Arctic Ocean is the smallest and
shallowest ocean in the world. It contains
only 1.3% of total global ocean volume.
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