Up north above the top of Europe, a moment of history is slouching towards some kind of climax. Europe’s last untapped oil and gas fields are being readied for exploitation, and have become a source of irritation between two of Europe’s most unlikely neighbours. Norway and Russia share the most remote of all European borders, east and south of Nordkap, where Europe stops reaching north, and the cold Norwegian settlement of Kirkenes stands on guard at the point where western and eastern European cultures meet most dramatically. The Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre began 2007 with a visit to his most remote outpost as a singal for the importance of Kirkanes in Norway’s future ecoomic developments. For the last couple of decades, Norway has used its oil reserves in the North Sea to guarantee one of the world’s richest societies, and its pension fund is now big enough to buy the island of Manhattan. But the last Norwegian oil field is about to be tapped and soon Norway’s pension fund will have to run on its own. Norway’s main problem, however, is the ecological catastrophe threatening the Barent Sea by the decaying Russian nuclear submarine fleet west of Murmansk, and the general Russian disinterest in the ecology of the Arctic.
Snow White, the first natural gas field in the Barents Sea, is about to be developed by the Norwegians, and after that there are only the potential fields in the disputed waters north of the Russian-Norwegian border and the Shtokman gas field in Russian waters. The Russians so far have refused to co-operate with the Norwegians, who have the most experience in drilling in difficult Arctic waters. They also refused Norwegian aid in saving the crew of their sunken submarine the Karsk.
The Norwegians fear more ecological disasters will spill over into their waters. Norway has made it clear it would like help from the European Union, to which it does not belong, but whose members would certainly prefer to buy their energy from Norway than from Russia. Finally there is Svalbard, the island group that represnts the northernmost inhabited territory in Europe on the main island Spitzbergen. In 1920 Norway was granted territorial rights to the islands, but mineral rights were ceded to all the signers of the treaty, now numbering 40, as the probability of oil and gas reserves has arisen. The treaty was originally aimed at coal deposits, and both Russians and Norwegians have mined there, but it is now unclear whether offshore oil and gas are also covered.
As the ice in Arctic waters begins to melt and both Northwest and Northeast Passages open up, conflicts about Arctic waters are destined to keep growing. Norway and Russia, who have never been particularly friendly, are perhaps predictable, if uneven, rivals in this area, but the main event may play out between traditional friends Canada and the US, as the US government refuses to recognize Canada’s claims to the waters between its Arctic islands.