On Tuesday, after 22 days at sea, the first-ever South Korean pilot service of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) reached its destination in Gwangyang, South Korea. Korean shipping line Hyundai Glovis chartered a Swedish oil tanker to carry 44,000 tons of naphtha, a light derivative of crude oil, from the Russian port of Ust-Luga, 110 kilometers […]
For all the talk of China and the Arctic, there’s one dark horse that definitely made itself known at the Arctic Circle: Singapore. With a speech that hit all the right notes, Sam Tan Chin Siong, Senior Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Member of Parliament, described the contributions Singapore can […]
The U.S. federal government shutdown’s dire consequences for research in Antarctica made the front page of The New York Times website today. On October 8, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it was canceling the U.S. Antarctic Research Program for 2013. The program has been placed on caretaker status, meaning that staff will be […]
Under the guidance of President Ólafur Grímsson, Iceland has strived to position itself as a new geopolitical center for the Arctic. While only a tiny portion of the country, the island of Grimsey, sits above the Arctic Circle, that hasn’t stopped it from claiming Arctic coastal statehood. With lots of shipping activity, plans to build […]
“It’s so far, but so very near to us now.” This is what Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha observed during the opening of the AsiArctic conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India last week. India received observer status in the Arctic Council in May of this year, along with […]
Four months after its acceptance as an observer to the Arctic Council, South Korea is fulfilling expectations surrounding its new role by leading a research survey into the Beaufort Sea to look for subsea permafrost and methane hydrates. The East Asian country’s self-constructed icebreaker, the Araon, left Barrow, Alaska on September 8 bound for Canadian waters. The Araon will spend […]
In my previous post, I noted how there isn’t likely to be a dramatic shift in Norway’s Arctic policy even though the Conservatives will now be at the helm of government. Regardless of whether Labour or the Conservatives dominate, oil will still be one of Norway’s top priorities in the Arctic. But questions remain as […]
In Norway’s elections on Monday, the Conservative party (Høyre) won the most seats, sweeping Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg from power after eight years. The Conservatives, however, did not win enough seats to form a majority government. As such, headed by new Prime Minister Erna Solberg, they will likely ally with the populist, anti-immigrant Progress […]
A graduate student recently interviewed me for his dissertation on Russia, the Arctic, oil and gas. During the interview, he asked me what I believed was the single most important Arctic resource. The answer could have been oil, gas, minerals, fisheries, or any other number of commodities. I responded that oil and gas are probably […]
On August 20, the first of ten new Russian search and rescue centers along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) opened in Naryan-Mar in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO). The governor of the NAO, Igor Fyodorov, and Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) Aleksander Chupriyan, opened the center. The EMERCOM sites will stretch from Murmansk, at […]
On August 8, the Chinese cargo ship Yong Sheng set sail from Dalian, a port city in northeastern China. The Hong Kong-flagged vessel, owned by Chinese state-owned company Cosco Group, is bound for Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, with its cargo of steel and heavy equipment. But unlike most ships from Asia headed for Europe, Yong […]
The Farne Islands, England lie at 55 degrees N. Off the coast of Northumberland, they’re not too far from Newcastle, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. I took a boat trip out to the islands a few weeks ago and saw thousands of puffins. The black and white birds were diving, bobbing, and flying with fish in […]
At the July 16-18 Symposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic held in Washington, D.C., Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski asserted, “When it comes to circumpolar navigation in the Arctic, regardless of which route is taken – the Northern Sea Route, the Northwest Passage, or perhaps across the pole if we see an ice-free summer, […]
Just last year, protestors in Nunavut spoke out against the high cost of milk and other basic foodstuffs. But few international media outlets paid attention to these protests, even though they touched upon an issue just as central to the Arctic as the environment: human development and well-being. In comparison, the scaling of The Shard, […]
A ship drops anchor in the Beaufort Sea, high in the Canadian Arctic. A group of scientists disembark to map the surrounding area and study the ice and flora and fauna. It may sound like 2013, but these events actually took place 100 years ago. In 1913, the Canadian Arctic Expedition (CAE) set off to […]