Climate changes and technology have triggered an international race for oil, gas, shipping routes, fish and minerals in the Arctic region and the bordering countries. This makes the fragile Arctic marine environment prone to new risks.

Robert Peary, who claimed to be the first western explorer to reach the Northern pole, would not have thought in his wildest dreams that almost a century later the frisbee-shaped land would still be up for grabs. According to the report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change, the rising global temperature and recent climate changes has resulted in melting of the formerly impenetrable polar permafrost, exposing the hitherto unreachable vast fossil fuel reserves and has increased their accessibility. Now the Arctic basin is considered to be a reservoir of huge oil resources (233 billion barrels of oil), perhaps more than one-fourth of global reserves, a large amount of which is present underneath the thawing ice.

So far the oil and gas have been unapproachable, expensive, and difficult to extract. Considering the fact that worldwide consumption of oil and gas will continue to increase by 70% in the next three decades with no apparent growth in production, the world is facing petro-shock. Further, the price of oil hovering at $70 per barrel and gasoline at around $3 refusing to come down, it is like serendipity. BP's sudden decision to reduce oil production by half from its Prudhoe Bay field in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has once again mirrored the complexity of arctic oil and gas production.

Global CEO Magazine, Oil Imbroglio, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, Global Reserves, Geological Survey, International Oil Conflicts, Ecosystem, Arctic Region, Russian Legislators, Territorial Disputes, International Marine Territorial Law, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.