|The Arctic regions may be defined in physical terms (astronomical [north of the Arctic Circle, latitude 66° 30′ N], climatic [above the 10 °C (50 °F) July isotherm], or vegetational [above the northern limit of the tree line]) or in human terms (the territory inhabited by the circumpolar cultures—Inuit [Eskimo] and Aleut in North America and Russia, Sami [Lapp] in northern Scandinavia and Russia, and 29 other peoples of the Russian North, Siberia, and East Asia). No single national sovereignty or treaty regime governs the region, which includes portions of eight countries: Canada, the United States, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Greenland (part of Denmark). The Arctic Ocean, 14.09 million sq km (5.44 million sq mi) in area, constitutes about two-thirds of the region. The land area consists of permanent ice cap, tundra, or taiga. The population (2002 est.) of peoples belonging to the circumpolar cultures is about 375,000. International organizations concerned with the Arctic include the Arctic Council, institutions of the Barents Region, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat. International scientific cooperation of the Arctic is the focus of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.|
At the beginning of the year 2002, it appeared that natural gas producers were in a frenzy to propose and then build multibillion-dollar natural gas pipelines from the North Slope of Alaska and the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Although there had been a sharp decline in gas prices from 2001, industry observers agreed that it was not a matter of whether a northern pipeline would be built but when. Production from other gas basins on the continent was rapidly declining, and by 2015 demand for gas was expected to climb to 885.8 million cu m (1 cu m = 35.3 cu ft) a year from the present demand level of 679.2 billion cu m. Alaska’s North Slope and the Mackenzie Delta were estimated to hold 2.8 billion and 707.9 million cu m, respectively, and the exploration potential was even larger. These huge gas reserves constituted the major proven untapped and secure supply of natural gas for North America.
Three main pipeline options were being considered. The Alaska pipeline route, estimated to cost $17.2 billion, would carry gas from the vast reserves at Prudhoe Bay south along the Alaska Highway through the Yukon and across British Columbia and Alberta to the U.S. markets. A second, so-called over-the-top route would transport Prudhoe Bay gas along the Beaufort Sea coast to Inuvik, N.W.Terr., where it would be combined with gas from the Mackenzie Delta. A single pipeline carrying gas from both Alaskan and Delta reserves would then continue down the Mackenzie Valley to southern markets. The preliminary cost estimate of this route was $15 billion.
In Canada a consortium of four gas producers proposed a stand-alone pipeline from Inuvik to transport up to 42 million cu m of gas a day south down the Mackenzie Valley to northern Alberta to hook up with existing Canadian pipeline systems. The cost was estimated at $3 billion, with another $1 billion needed for the drilling and exploration infrastructure to support the operations. In addition, the government of the Northwest Territories requested $133 million to establish an infrastructure that would facilitate the building of the pipeline. The territorial government also wanted revenue generated from resource development to be shared among the federal, territorial, and aboriginal governments.
Whichever route was chosen, any northern pipeline would face the most extensive and complex regulatory exercises ever held in Canada and the United States before a final decision was made to proceed with the construction. The politics of the various pipeline projects became mired in conflicting interests between the various federal, state, and territorial governments and industry, environmentalist, and aboriginal organizations. In April the U.S. Senate approved some $10 billion in loan guarantees and potentially billions more in tax credits aimed at supporting a $3.25-per-thousand-cubic-feet floor price of gas sold by Alaskan gas producers. The legislation also contained language that would eliminate all pipeline routes that bypassed the Alaskan heartland, including the proposed route along the North Slope of Alaska. By midyear, industry spokespersons were indicating that the cost projections for the Alaskan pipeline project had increased to $19.4 billion after larger start-up expenses and increased pipeline capacity were factored in, which made, the project uneconomical. Proponents suggested that the decision to build the pipeline would likely be delayed until 2003, citing fiscal uncertainty in Alaska and the need to await outcomes of negotiations concerning energy legislation being considered by the U.S. Congress.
Meanwhile, in Canada the Mackenzie Valley pipeline proponents announced that they had concluded their project-feasibility study and intended to go on to the next stage of pipeline development with the expectation that delta gas could be onstream in six to eight years. There was pressure on the Canadian government to provide subsidies for the building of roads and other infrastructure to support construction and to move quickly to deal with aboriginal land claims on the pipeline route.
In May the U.S. Geological Survey reported that National Petroleum Reserve—Alaska likely contained a mean amount of 1.5 billion cu m (9.3 billion bbl) of recoverable oil, up to four times the amount reported in 1980. The reserve, located west of Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope and created specifically for development before World War II, had been partly opened for drilling, with stringent environmental restrictions, in 1998. Washington had made developing the oil reserve an energy priority but had not announced specific plans for exploiting its potential.
In March U.S. Navy scientists predicted that routine commercial shipping would flow across the Arctic Ocean within 10 years. The Arctic ice cap was reported to be shrinking 4% a decade, and submarine sonar information suggested that ice cover had decreased by as much as 40% since 1970. The political consequences could be considerable for Canada’s Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route. Both Canada and Russia considered these passages to be their territorial waters, while the United States considered them international waters.
Frustrated by a number of unfavourable decisions against it by the International Whaling Commission, Japan led a successful drive to deny Alaskan and Siberian native peoples a renewal of permission to hunt whales. This was the first time in the 56-year history of the commission that quotas allowing subsistence whaling had been rejected. A group of privately funded Japanese scientists developed a plan to create an Ice Age wildlife park in Siberia that eventually could feature a genetic hybrid of the extinct mammoth and modern-day elephants. The scientists were conducting excavations in Siberia in the hope of discovering a frozen mammoth specimen preserved well enough in the permafrost for its sperm to be used to impregnate an elephant.
In August Inuit from across the North met at the general assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Kuujjuaq, Arctic Quebec, to discuss many Inuit issues, including the idea of a single alphabet for Inuktitut, the Inuit language. The Inuit currently used the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets, syllabic symbols, and a half dozen spelling variations within those writing systems.