Circumpolar News
Gazprom delays Shtokman gas field three years 
(Dmitry Zhdannikov/Globe and Mail, 5 February 2010) -- Moscow - Russia has delayed the start of its giant Arctic Shtokman gas field by three years to 2016 after a dip in European demand and a surge in North American shale gas output dampened its export prospects. Russian gas export monopoly OAO Gazprom said in a statement on Friday it had agreed with partners Total SA and Statoil ASA to delay pipeline gas production from Shtokman from 2013 to 2016. Liquefied natural gas output will begin in 2017 instead of the earlier planned 2014. The decision was made due to “changes in the market situation and particularly in the LNG market“. Shtokman, one of the world's largest gas fields, in the stormy Barents Sea, is expected to require $15-billion (U.S.) of investment in its first phase. Gazprom saw a slump in exports last year amid a global economic slowdown and due to a surge in unconventional gas supplies, such as gas extracted from shale, in the United States.
Posted 5 February 2010; 11:41:29 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Barents Euro-Arctic Region, Circumpolar News, Economic issues, February10, Oil, gas, non-renewable resources
Greenland MPs call for end to Danish political involvement
(Sermitsiaq via IceNews, 3 February 2010) -- The Danish parliament’s elected representatives for Greenland have declared that they are ready to begin negotiations aimed at discontinuing the semi-autonomous country’s involvement in Danish domestic politics. “This is a process we need to get started,” said Greenland MP Sofia Rossen. “This was something I said during the last election”. Rossen has not suggested a date for any withdrawal but claimed it would not happen until Greenland has been afforded full responsibility for the administration of its own domestic affairs. Sermitsiaq reports that the question of independence for both the Faroe Islands and Greenland is regularly debated in the Danish parliament, where the overseas territories are represented. Danish parliamentarians frequently question the fact that either region can use its elected representatives to determine the outcome of a close national election; while the territories themselves claim to be hamstrung by adhering to Danish political values which impinge on their national identities. Greenland has been under home-rule from Denmark since 1979, with more competencies being transferred to the local government in 2008. The present scenario sees the Danish Royal Government oversee Greenland’s foreign affairs, financial policy and security; with a DKK 3.4 billion (USD 633 million) subsidy each year: roughly DKK 60,000 (USD 11,300) per Greenlander per annum.
Posted 5 February 2010; 11:36:16 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Circumpolar News, February10, Greenland, North Atlantic
Climate change causes wolverine decline across Canada
(Matt Walker/BBC News, 4 February 2010) -- The wolverine, a predator renowned for its strength and tenacious character, may be slowly melting away along with the snowpack upon which it lives. Research shows wolverine numbers are falling across North America. Their decline has been linked to less snow settling as a result of climate change. The study is the first to show a decline in the abundance of any land species due to vanishing snowpack. Details of the wolverine's decline are published in Population Ecology. The wolverine lives in boreal forest across Scandinavia, northern Russia, northern China, Mongolia and North America, where it ranges mostly across six provinces or territories of western Canada. This largest member of the weasel family eats carrion and food it hunts itself, including hares, marmots, smaller rodents and young or weakened ungulates. It has evolved for life on the snowpack, having thick fur and outsized feet that help it move across and hunt on snow. Wildlife biologist Dr Jedediah Brodie of the University of Montana, in Missoula, US, wondered how climate change might be having an impact on snowpack levels, and on the animals that depend on it. He had previously researched how declining levels of snow in the US Yellowstone National Park, caused by climate change, was changing the abundance of aspen trees and how elk feed on them. Dr Brodie and his colleague, Professor Eric Post of Pennsylvania State University, at University Park, US, gathered data on snowpack levels across six provinces or territories of Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and the Yukon Territory. In all bar the Yukon, he found that snowpack depth declined significantly between 1968 and 2004. ... They found a striking correlation between declining snowpack and falling numbers of the predator. "In provinces where winter snowpack levels are declining fastest, wolverine populations tend to be declining most rapidly," the researchers wrote in the journal article. "Spring snowpack also appears to influence wolverine population dynamics." The researchers found only one territory, the Northwest Territories, where wolverine numbers are increasing. There, snowpack levels are declining but they remain much higher and less variable than in most other provinces.
Posted 5 February 2010; 10:44:16 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Canada, Circumpolar News, Climate change response, Conservation and Wildlife, February10, Flora and Fauna, North America
Nunavut proposes Baffin Island caribou survey
(CBC News, 4 February 2010) -- Nunavut wildlife biologists want to conduct the first extensive survey of caribou across Baffin Island as early as next year. Officials with Nunavut's Environment Department are proposing the idea in Baffin communities this year, with the hope that a survey could begin in 2011. "There's never ever been a population estimate for Baffin Island," Debbie Jenkins, the department's Baffin regional wildlife biologist, told CBC News. Government biologists have already conducted helicopter surveys of caribou on northern Baffin Island in 2008 and 2009. In those surveys, a total 170 caribou were counted in an area spanning more than 80,000 square kilometres. Jenkins said that seems like an alarmingly low number of caribou — and an estimate corroborated by anecdotes from local hunters and trappers organizations — but she said biologists need a more complete picture. "What we don't know is if this is indicative of the population of caribou, or if it's just indicative of that small area," she said. If it turns out the number of caribou from the existing surveys represents the island as a whole, Jenkins said conservation measures may have to be put in place. "With good foundation information, we can go ahead confidently with the communities, with our hunters, to discuss what options we have ahead of us to implement in terms of conservation measures, management measures," she said. But longtime hunters like Solomon Awa of Iqaluit said caribou populations are not necessarily in decline, but simply moving around the island. "There's a reason for that — the vegetation took a long time to grow after they have eaten them," he said.
Posted 5 February 2010; 8:15:43 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Canada, Circumpolar News, Conservation and Wildlife, February10, North America, Nunavut
Scant Arctic ice could mean summer "double whammy"
(Deborah Zabarenko, Environment/Reuters, 4 February 2010) -- Scant ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a "double whammy" of powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said on Thursday. "It's not that the ice keeps melting, it's just not growing very fast," said Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. In January, Arctic sea ice grew by about 13,000 square miles (34,000 sq km) a day, which is a bit more than one-third the pace of ice growth during the 1980s, and less than the average for the first decade of the 21st century. Arctic ice cover is important to the rest of the world because the Arctic is the globe's biggest weather-maker, sometimes dubbed Earth's air-conditioner for its ability to cool down the planet. More melting Arctic sea ice could affect this weather-making process.... If Arctic ice fails to build up sufficiently during the dark, cold winter months, it is likely to melt faster and earlier when spring comes, Serreze said by telephone from Colorado. "We've grown back ice in the winter, but that ice tends to be thin and that's the problem," he said. "You set yourself up for a world of hurt in summer. The ice that is there is also thinner than it was before and thinner ice simply takes less energy to melt out the next summer." With less of the Arctic sea covered in ice in winter, and with the existing ice thinner and more fragile than before, "you've got a double whammy going on," Serreze said.
Posted 5 February 2010; 7:04:59 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Arctic Ocean, Circumpolar News, Climate Change and Weather, February10, Research
Alaskan congressman proposes Arctic port study
(Business Week, 3 February 2010) -- ANCHORAGE - U.S. Rep. Don Young has introduced a bill aimed at studying the potential for an Arctic deep water port. The measure is a companion bill to one introduced in December by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Young, a fellow Alaska Republican, says the measure will provide for a two-year study to determine strategic capabilities for an Arctic port and a favorable location. Young says the United States has the opportunity to address the prospects of future industry and can use changing Arctic conditions its advantage. This legislation has been referred to the House Armed Services Committee.
Posted 5 February 2010; 3:24:44 PM. Permalink
Tagged: Alaska, Circumpolar News, February10, North America, Transportation, Infrastructure and Construction
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