Arctic Economics

What happened to the price of oil last year?

Oil price movements in 2007-08 were memorable:

 

Source: Hamilton.

What happened?  James Hamilton of UC San Diego (and Econbrowser) takes a stab at an explanation.  Here's the short version ( in two parts from Econbrowser): Causes of the Oil Shock of 2007-08 and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08.  Here's the long version (from the Brookings Institution) - Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-09.

Sled dogs to snowmobiles

In the early 1990s, Alaska's Board of Fisheries had to address a controversy over the feeding of subsistence fish to dogs used for commercial purposes.  To provide some background, David Anderson prepared a paper on the use of dog teams in the Yukon River drainage, and their fish consumption, for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Division of Subsistence.    Anderson described the evolving role of dog sledding in the regional economy: The Use of Dog Teams and the Use of Subsistence-caught Fish for Feeding Sled Dogs in the Yukon River Drainage, Alaska.

Coastal Eskimos had been using sled dogs for a long time prior to contact with the West:

What happened to Iceland?

Michael Lewis explains, in the April Vanity Fair: Wall Street on the Tundra:

Iceland instantly became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.” 

Stefansson and the bear

Almost 100 years ago the ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson went hunting for food while traveling across the sea ice with a small party:

Snoehvit's Shaky Start

 

Snoehvit gas field and the pipeline to the LNG plant near Hammerfest.  Source: StatoilHydro.

Guy Chazan reports (Norwegian Oil Firm Goes to Energy’s Last Frontier) that StatoilHydro's Snoehvit project was ambitious. Remote-controlled gas wells at the bottom of the Barents Sea; 90 miles of underwater pipeline bringing the gas to shore; a liquification plant built in Spain, floated to a remote island in northern Norway on the world's "largest heavy-lift vessel," and floated into position on "a high tide" and "a full moon."

But things haven't gone as well as they might:

The Stoltenberg Report

Last June, the Nordic foreign ministers asked Norway's former Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, Thorvald Stoltenberg, for ideas to encourage closer foreign affairs and security cooperation over the next 10 to 15 years. 

Now we have it:  Nordic Cooperation On Foreign and Security Policy.  Stoltenberg's 13 proposals are his own work, based on conversations with politicians and experts; this is not the result of committee deliberations and there was a very limited staff.  These will be developed further in coming weeks and will be taken up at a meeting of the Nordic foreign ministers in Reykjavik this spring (Stoltenberg Report Presented to Nordic Foreign Ministers).

Not all of the proposals deal with the Arctic, but many do.  In summary:

New law to govern Russia's Northern Sea Route

Russia is preparing a new law to regulate activity along its Northern Sea Route.  Here's the report from the Barents Observer: Russia prepares law on Northern Sea Route:

Great narwhal video

Spectacular video of narwal following a lead in the ice, from the BBC:  'Arctic unicorns' in icy display

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.

New U.S. Arctic Fishery Management Plan

Area covered by the new Arctic Fishery Management Plan Source: Council's Draft Arctic FMP.

On Thursday, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to adopt a Fishery Management Plan for the Arctic.  There's currently some limited commercial and subsistence fishing managed by Alaska in her state marine and internal waters, but none, or no more than trivial amounts incidental to the state fisheries, in Federal waters (starting three miles offshore).  Moreover, there is probably little or no current interest in fishing in Federal Arctic waters.

The new plan effectively prohibits commercial fishing in Federal waters for now, and creates mechanisms to ensure that if there is interest in the future, any fishing develops in a way that takes account of the impacts on fish stocks and on other parts of the ecosystem.

Wesley Loy of the Anchorage Daily News reports here: Council Outlaws Arctic Fisheries.  Here's the draft Fishery Management Plan: Fishery Management Plan for Fish Resources of the Arctic Management Area, and here's the analysis.

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Does NATO have a role in the Arctic? What is it?

In late December, NATO's Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, gave a keynote address at a Reykjavik seminar on "Security Prospects in the High North."   Does NATO have a role in the Arctic.  He thinks so: