The Arctic: Oil's last frontier

The sea under the Arctic polar cap is unlikely to remain largely untapped for long - governments and corporations are racing to carve up the Arctic oil pie, which according to a USGS study may contain 25% of all untapped reserves. With it comes the sticky and as yet unanswered political questions over which countries have rights to which fields and whether this development can be pulled off without too much environmental and social damage.

Then there's the matter of drilling itself. The Arctic ice pack, three to 10 meters thick and always shifting, poses significant challenges. The solution involves heavy reinforcement of rigs or drill ships and using steel that is less brittle, as normal steel can easily break at temperatures below 20 degF (-6.6 degC). Whether even the reinforced rigs survive is a concern for environmentalists, who fear the ice could cause a spill by damaging equipment and make a cleanup next to impossible.

And there's also a feeling that drilling in the Arctic, made possible largely by global warming at least partially caused by burning fossil fuels, is perverse. "It just feeds a vicious cycle," said Athan Manuel, director of lands protection for the Sierra Club. Manuel said meeting the world's energy needs should first start with a serious commitment to conservation combined with expanded use of cleaner technologies. "More drilling is not the solution," he said. "We think this is a terrible idea."

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