by Alex Duval-Smith
27-11-05
Giant snowflakes tumble down outside the Kaikanten bar. Inside, Mustafa
Mirreh from Somalia stares down his pool cue, trying to pot the black. His
opponent, Italian engineer Pier Luigi Poletto, has turned to the slot machine.
The Kilkenny beer has run out. There is only canned Guinness.
This could be grounds for a fight, but French fishermen J-P and Max have been
distracted by the rare sight of a woman crossing the floor.
These are the Klondikers of global warming: men from all over the world who
have come to Hammerfest, gateway to the Barents Sea, to make their fortune from
new resources -- oil, gas, fish and diamonds -- made accessible by the receding
ice.
It is the dark season here -- two months from November to January when the sun
never rises above the snow-laced rocks around Hammerfest, ice-free thanks to the
Gulf stream. In the horseshoe-shaped port, trawlers from all over the world wait
for favourable weather to head back into the Barents Sea. Hammerfest, with its
colourful wooden houses, feels cosy. But it is a nerve centre of the scramble
for the Arctic's wealth that raises urgent questions.
The 14 mm sq km Arctic Ocean is home to 25 % of the planet's unextracted oil
and natural gas. With a population of four mm, the region is much more stable
than the Middle East. Global warming, in combination with the current high oil
price, makes it ever more accessible. Yet the bordering countries -- Russia,
Canada, the US, Norway and Danish Greenland -- have yet to agree on who owns
what. Long-forgotten bays, waterways and islands are moving to the top of the
international agenda.
Mirreh, 19, has spent eight months as a cleaner at Snow White, a giant liquefied
natural gas (LNG) plant at Hammerfest, one of the world's biggest building
sites.
”The wage is £ 20 an hour. I have saved £ 20,000. The problem is there is
nothing to do and not enough women,” he said.
French trawler skipper Pascal Verdiere has had no trouble filling his Grande
Hermine trawler's 250-ton cod quota.
“Cod likes a water temperature below two degrees, so whereas, three years ago we
did our fishing around 75 degrees north, we now have to go as far as 80 degrees,
which means Spitsbergen and bad storms.”
But each of his 35 crew earns £ 15,000 for 12 weeks at sea.
Trawlers are frequently at the centre of territorial disputes. Whereas the
Antarctic was carved up in 1959, no international treaty exists to determine the
extent of each Arctic nation's ownership. In October Cryosat, a space shuttle
launched to measure the Arctic thaw and the limits of the continental shelves,
crashed after lift-off in Russia. As a result, debates are guided by rival
scientific studies, such as one which claims the North Pole for Denmark by
alleging it sits on Greenland's continental shelf.
Earlier, the Norwegian coastguard arrested two Spanish trawlers in the waters
around the Svalbard Islands, which Norway has unilaterally decreed a fisheries
protection zone. Oslo and Madrid are now in a complicated row over who has the
right to prosecute.
Norway and Russia are soon to resume talks -- stalled for two years -- over a
disputed area of the Barents Sea. While an agreement exists between them
allowing fishing in part of the area, known as the Grey Zone, both countries
want access to the larger disputed area for oil and gas exploration. Immediately
to the east of the area, the Russians have discovered the 1,400 sq km Shtokman
field, the largest offshore gas deposit in the world.
Resolution of the dispute could have an impact on the entire Arctic area. The
Russians want the “sector line principle” to be applied, meaning that the Arctic
should be divided, cake-like, from the Pole. The Norwegians want the “median
line principle” -- a border line along which each point is equidistant to each
country's land mass.
Despite the rivalries, Arctic expert Olav Fagelund Knudsen doubts whether
anyone would go to war over them.
“Russia and the US became pretty good at resolving their differences during the
Cold War. So there is room to hope they will be sensible. The most exciting
development in the region is who will control the North East Passage and its
lucrative shipping between Europe and China.” He said a Russian mine on Svalbard
is already extracting high-quality coal.
De Beers, the mining giant, and about 60 other prospecting companies are
searching for diamonds beneath frozen lakes in northern Canada. In the US, there
is pressure to increase oil exploration. A dispute between Denmark and Canada
this year over Hans Island -- an uninhabited rock off Greenland -- centres on
the potential for oil in the Nares Strait.
There are outstanding disputes between the US and Canada over the North West
Passage and the Beaufort Sea. The Russian parliament has yet to ratify a 1990
agreement with the US dividing the Bering Sea. Only a small international body,
the Arctic Council, exists to mediate. Its main focus is the welfare of 4 mm
mainly nomadic people. The only legal tool, the Convention on the Law of the
Sea, has not been ratified by the US.
Meanwhile, evidence suggests the Klondikers are right to head north.
According to data published in October, the area covered by ice in September --
5.3 mm sq km -- was the lowest since records began in 1978. In August the
Akademik Fyodorov became the first ship to reach the North Pole unassisted by an
icebreaker.
Opposite the Kaikanten bar, Alf-Birger Olsen sits in the council offices
counting the benefits of global warming to the 9,300 population.
“Hammerfest, ice-free all year, was proclaimed a town in 1789. We were a base
for polar bear hunters and cod fishermen. But in recent times the Norwegian
government had to give people incentives to live in the region,” said the trade
and industry director.
When talk turns to the Snow White gas project, Olsen's eyes light up.
“Building the plant has required 2,000 people of 57 nationalities... The
population of Hammerfest has increased and dozens of spin-off businesses
created.”
The project willcome on stream in 2007 to deliver 2.4 bn cm of liquefied natural
gas to the US and Spain among others.
Property tax paid by Statoil, the company which owns the £ 5.8 bn Snow White
terminal, has provided funding for a new Arctic Culture Centre.
“We are really thankful to Statoil,” said culture chief Gerd Hagen, “but this
development is not all good. When 2,000 men suddenly descend on a little town,
it changes things. There are fights at the weekend and women feel the need to
withdraw a little bit. They have their bar, Kaikanten, and we have another place
in the street behind.”
Source: The Observer