Arctic Economics

The polar bear's last stand

If Steve Amstrup and his co-authors are right, the polar bears may be making their last stand in the Canadian high Arctic in 100 years: Polar Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea II: Demography and Population Growth in Relation to Sea Ice Conditions. 

Amstrup et al., working for the U.S. Geological Survey, grouped the world's 19 polar bear sub-populations into four general ecoregions - shown in the figure below (the two-letter codes identify the different subpopulations):

Renovating the eastern abutment of the Arctic Bridge

 

Murmansk Harbor from Wikipedia

The "Arctic Bridge" is a shipping route connecting Murmansk with Churchill, Manitoba.  The Russians plan to invest heavily in port infrastructure in Murmansk: New deep-sea port for Murmansk:

Canada plans to extend its Arctic maritime regulatory structure

The Northwest Passage - at least the more southerly route - is open again this year: Arctic shortcuts open up; decline pace steady.

Yesterday the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, announced that the government will be taking steps to extend Canadian jurisdiction in the waters around its coasts (PM announces government of Canada will extend jurisdiction over Arctic waters). 

The Prime Minister proposed new legislation and regulatory changes:

"The Prime Minister announced that his government will be introducing changes to the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act as part of its fall legislative agenda. Currently the Act allows the Canadian Government to regulate all shipping in zones up to 100 nautical miles from the nearest Canadian land in order to guard against pollution of the region’s marine and coastal environments. Under the proposed new law, this jurisdiction will be extended to 200 nautical miles.

"In addition the Prime Minister announced that his government will establish new regulations under the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 that will require mandatory reporting from all ships destined for Arctic waters within the same 200 nautical mile limit."

The Global International Waters Assessment

FYI:

The Global International Waters Assessment is preparing studies of the world's marine water bodies.  Studies are available for three Arctic regions:

Scary campfire tales told by paleobiologists

Robert Boyd of McClatchy reports (Scientists close in on mass killer of life on earth) that some scientists think CO2 was implicated in the great extinction of 251 million years ago.  Almost all life (95% of marine species, 85% of land species) died off:

Exactly what caused the ancient mass extinction is still unclear, but here's how many researchers think it may have unfolded:

Over a period of about a million years, an enormous quantity of lava from deep in the Earth's interior oozed up through giant cracks in Siberia's crust. The molten mass "froze" into step-like slabs of flood basalts, volcanic rocks known as the Siberian Traps.

Enough lava gushed out to cover an area almost as large as the continental U.S....

The lava from the Siberian Traps sent huge quantities of carbon dioxide and methane (natural gas) into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases caused an epic spell of global warming. Toxic acid rain drizzled from the sky, and the ozone shield in the atmosphere thinned, letting deadly ultra-violet radiation pass through.

As is happening now, the Earth warmed more near the poles than it did at the Equator. The smaller temperature difference slowed the great ocean currents that keep the waters circulating. The oceans stagnated and lost most of their oxygen. Marine plants and animals suffocated.

What happened to snuff out life on land is still debated. Some researchers believe that bacteria in the ocean, living on sulfur instead of oxygen, churned out vast quantities of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a lethal gas with a rotten-egg smell. As the hydrogen sulfide gas emerged from the sea, it choked half of all land creatures.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 reached 1,000 to 1,500 parts per million.  Today's level is 385 parts per million and the concentration is currently rising at 2 parts per.

Boyd is interest in laying out this particular scenario and not in going into alternative ideas.  He certainly doesn't assert that there is a scientific consensus behind this.  This Wikipedia article lays out some ideas: Permian-Triassic extinction event.

Svalbard fish patrol

The Russian trawler Kodrun, detained by the Norwegian Coast Guard.

Illegal fishing is a serious problem in some Arctic waters.  The World Wildlife Fund looks at the issue in this working paper: Illegal Fishing in Arctic Waters.  The paper focuses on cod in the Barents Sea, and on Alaska pollock in the Western Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.  

In the last week the Norwegian Coast Guard has detained two Russia fishing vessels in the vicinity of the Svalbard Islands for fishing violations: Russian trawler arrested in Spitsbergen waters; Norway arrested another Russian vessel (Svalbard and Spitzbergen refer to the same islands on the northern edge of the Barents Sea.  I've been using Svalbard in this blog and continue to do so here, but the Barents Observer refers to Spitsbergen).

What sorts of things can go wrong in the Arctic?

 
HMCS Toronto and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Pierre Radisson in Hudson Strait.  Photo by Sergent Kevin MacAulay.  Downloaded from the Canadian Forces web site.

The Torch reports that Canadian Forces are training in the Arctic this month: Northern Operation Nanook 08.  The scenarios they're practicing:

* an outbreak of disease on a cruise ship
* a hostage-taking on a cruise ship
* a fuel spill and a fire on a Russian cargo ship

Shtokman or Yamal?

Gazprom is currently dependent on four giant gas fields that are either declining, or about to decline.  Its hopes for new domestic gas lie in the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea, or in the fields on the Yamal Peninsula.  Gazprom may not have enough resources to develop both.  Anders Aslund explains (Gazprom's Risky Strategy):

Russia's Investment Climate

One last post, for now, on the investment climate in Russia. 

Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute reminds us how the Russian government trashed the privately held Yukos oil company so that the state owned firm Rosneft could pick its assets up cheaply: US-Russia Economic Relationship: Implications of the Yukos Affair:

Rent-seeking skews Russian energy investment priorities

Tom Lasseter of McClatchy News reports on the depletion of Russia's oil fields: Russia's oil boom may be running on empty.  According to this report, investments are going into getting more oil out of old fields, rather than into the development of new reserves:

Most of the oil produced after the country's 1998 financial collapse has come from drilling and re-drilling old Soviet oil fields with more advanced equipment — squeezing more black gold out of the same ground — and efforts to develop new fields have been slow or non-existent.

...Valery Tsvetkov, a deputy of the institute of market problems at the state-funded Academy of Sciences, laid out an array of statistics showing what's wrong with Russia's oil industry.

Among them: In 1990, some 17.3 million feet of new wells were drilled looking for new reserves in the former Soviet Union, almost all of them in what's now the Russian Federation. In 2007, about 3.9 million feet were drilled.

Quotes point to the influence of rent-seeking politicians: