News on Arctic extractive Industries

On By FstammleIn All, Announcements, Extractive Industries, Indigenous Peoples, North American North

Some news on extractive industries, indigenous people and impact studies in the Arctic have piled up recently, which I would like to share here. Most of these works are related to members of our Extractive Industries Working Group (EIWG) of IASSA, which you are welcome to join if you work on such issues.

Old Drill rigs in East Yamal, Sabetta, to be used in a new joint venture between Novatek, Gazprom and Total

1) Mark Nuttall announced a special volume of “The Polar Journal” with articles on extractive industries: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpol20/current.              I guess the contributions by Mark Nuttall, Arthur Mason and Hannah Strauss are most relevant for our interest.

2) WWF Russia published a book critically looking at government support for oil and gas development. It claims to be a comprehensive analysis of subsidy for fossile fuels and highlights this approach as inadequate at times where humanity needs to search for alternative sources of energy. It also identifies three gaps that still inhibit Russia to go down that road: a governance gap, a knowledge and science gap, and a gap in the technical capacity for oil spill response.

3) If somebody is interested in a big wall-map of all oil and gas activities in the Arctic, this link provided by EIWG member Arthur Mason may be of interest: The Arctic Frontiers Oil & Gas Activity Map To 2017  Note that this is not related to the conference with the same name that is held annually in Tromso!
The second link that Arthur offered is a economic analysis, markets, technologies etc, called Offshore Arctic Oil and Gas Market Report To 2017

4) Arthur also shares the link to an unusually elaborate New York Times report on Shell’s plans to drill offshore Alaska in the Arctic Ocean – a plan that has a long history of indigenous and environmental opposition, but was backed recently by the Obama administration of the USA. I wonder if anybody with Alaska experience can share views on how this is discussed in Barrow or the North Slope Borough in general.

5) Has anybody information on the Extractive Industries Transparency initiative? It seems to be a major initiative, and it would be interesting to know which Arctic countries have subscribed to implement it.