Monthly Archives: April 2011

Arctic troops. (C) US Army Northern Warfare Training Center

Life is a thriller in its own right.

In the latest chapter, Russia is now training a “special motorized infantry brigade” to fight in the Arctic, where it has laid claim to a lion’s share of the billions of tons of untapped oil and gas reserves under the Arctic ocean.

That sounds so “twentieth century,” doesn’t it?

But, considering global events, it’s not.

As laid out in MELTING DOWN’s plot, Russia is poised to be to the world energy industry what the US is to world arms industry, i.e. #1.

If I were Russia, I’d be thrilled at world events.

First, the Arctic continues to lose sea ice. In fact, just a month ago, JPL announced that, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study, “the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate.” Translation: it is getting easier to access those oil and gas reserves.

Second, Japan just elevated the Fukushima nuclear disaster to “Chernobyl” status, making those events the only two Level 7 disasters on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

While that is great news for nuclear opponents, it is even better news for oil, coal and natural gas companies. European governments, in particular, are re-thinking whether to build new nuclear plants and/or to extend the life of existing ones. And, in Japan and other countries that limit nuclear, fossil fuels will be the only near-term way to replace most of the demand for electrical power.

Plus, there is the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. The more unstable it is, the more risk there is that minor oil supply disruptions will turn into major oil disruptions, if not catastrophic ones.

Given all these current events, those oil and gas reserves under the Arctic are looming even larger as a future source for transportation, heating and electrical generation.

Russia knows the value of those reserves. And, apparently, it is getting ready to militarily defend its claims.

  shareshare