For nearly forty years one of the planet’s most energy-rich continents has been ruled successfully by international treaty. It has also been off-limits to drilling for the sizable oil reserves, which lie off its shores.
Of course given that no one lives in Antarctica (other than a few thousand seasonal scientists) and that much of it is covered by two miles of ice makes it a tough place to drill and far more easily managed than say Gaza or Afghanistan. Its remoteness has kept its vast offshore oil resources far more easily protected than those in the Gulf of Mexico or the deserts of Saudi Arabia.
Yet the ice-cover in both the Antarctic and Arctic gradually disappears, each region — rich with oil and other precious minerals — is being viewed anew, with many eyeing future resource development.
The treaty that governs Antarctica officially keeps the continent off-limits to drilling for oil until 2041. It’s a different story in the Arctic. As the Arctic Ocean’s annual sea ice cover disappears – many believe that within two decades the region will be ice-free during the summer – competition has already begun among its neighboring countries (the U.S., Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway plus Iceland and Greenland) over who owns what, especially when it comes to oil. (For the rest of my dispatch from the Arctic, go to takepart.com.)
