Overview

The prospect of vast oil and gas reserves beneath the Arctic Ocean has prompted countries to begin evaluating exploration options to assess what's really at stake.

By one estimate, 400 billion barrels of oil might lie beneath the Arctic seabed. That's about 20-30 per cent of the world's likely but undiscovered oil reserves that may lie beneath it

The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctic region around the South Pole. The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean (which overlies the North Pole) and parts of Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The word Arctic comes from the Greek word arktos, which means bear. This is due to the location of the constellation (a group of stars) Ursa Major, the "Great Bear", above the Arctic region.

There are numerous definitions of the Arctic region. The boundary is generally considered to be north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33’N), which is the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night. Other definitions are based on climate and ecology, such as the 10°C (50°F) July isotherm, which roughly corresponds to the tree line in most of the Arctic. Socially and politically, the Arctic region includes the northern territories of the eight Arctic states, including Lapland, although by natural science definitions much of this territory is considered subarctic.

Under international law, no country owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 370 kilometre (200 nautical mile) economic zone around their coasts.

Present computer projections suggest that the average temperature in the Arctic could rise between 3°C and 9°C during the next century, twice as much as the average rise in the rest of the world. The models project that by 2040 most of the Arctic Ocean will be entirely ice-free for a short period in late summer, meaning that ice formed later in the year will be new ice rather than multi-year ice, which improves the prospects for navigation in all seasons. However, last summer the rate of melting was much faster than the models predicted. Some experts now think that a tipping point has already been crossed into a period of faster melting, such that shipping routes may open for much of the year, even for normal ships without icebreaker capacity, by as early as 2015.