Why are fragile environments such as the Arctic and ANWR coming under increasing pressure for fossil fuel exploration?
Recently, with oil prices on the rise and oil reserves on decline, fragile environments such as the Arctic and ANWR are coming under increasing pressure to develop their unexploited resources. It is said that Arctic region holds 25% of the world’s unexploited oil and gas reserves this accounts to around the same amount as Saudi Arabia’s gas and oil richness.
They are under increasing pressure due to the high demand for fossil fuels, especially in MEDC’s and NIC’s who are not focusing on renewable sources, but instead continuing to rely on oil and gas, in order to focus on development. In fact they should be thinking about alternative energy supplies for the future when oil and gas reserves do eventually dry out. The USA is all for developing the Arctic because the want to have autonomy over their own supply and it will also reduce reliance on foreign exports thereby lowering the amount they spend on oil. Also Russia is in agreement that the Arctic should be exploited for oil and gas because they believe they have rights to that land, and feel the oil would help companies like Gazprom to thrive.
One of the reasons the Arctic is coming under increasing pressure to exploit its reserves is because of the shrinking ice caps. As the map below shows ice capacity is rapidly declining meaning that oil reserves are easier to access making it cheaper to locate and extract the oil. The exploration of the Arctic for petroleum is considered more technically challenging than in any other environment so far. However, technological development, high oil prices and melting of ice due to global warming allow for exploration. As a result, the region has been receiving interest from the petroleum industry. One of the main reasons the Arctic is virtually untouched is