Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Tomgram: Michael Klare, A Formula for Catastrophe in the Arctic | TomDispatch

Tomgram: Michael Klare, A Formula for Catastrophe in the Arctic | TomDispatch

How Mike Pompeo and the militarist-oil factions want to keep warming the planet so we can get at the fossil fuels and other minerals under the Arctic.


The scramble for the Arctic’s resources was launched early in this century when the world’s major energy firms, led by BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Russian gas giant Gazprom, began exploring for oil and gas reserves in areas only recently made accessible by retreating sea ice. Those efforts gained momentum in 2008, after the U.S. Geological Survey published a report, Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal, indicating that as much as one-third of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lay in areas north of the Arctic Circle. Much of this untapped fossil fuel largess was said to lie beneath the Arctic waters adjoining Alaska (that is, the United States), Canada, Greenland (controlled by Denmark), Norway, and Russia -- the so-called “Arctic Five.”