(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Henry Meyer – November 19, 2013) Russia is showing “political will” to end a two-month-long dispute over the prosecution of Greenpeace activists after they began to be set free on bail, President Vladimir Putin’s human rights adviser said. “It’s a good sign,” Mikhail Fedotov said in a phone interview today from Moscow. “I hope the same […]
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ST. PETERSBURG. Nov 14 (Interfax) – Lawyers have met with several Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise activists in a St. Petersburg detention facility, a Greenpeace spokesman told Interfax on Thursday. “The lawyers met with five environmentalists, including Russian citizen Andrei Allakhverdov, who had been placed into the Kresty [detention facility]. The detention facility is basically all right, and the conditions are acceptable. […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 12 (Interfax) – The Russian president’s Human Rights Council has asked Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin to consider the possible release of the Arctic Sunrise crewmembers who were detained for staging a protest off Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya oil rig in the Pechora Sea from custody. “The Russian president’s Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights is […]
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MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) Russia is unprepared for a war in the Arctic, a government report says. The country, which has the longest Arctic border, would be unable to quickly respond to an attack in the area, the Regional Development Ministry said in an assessment of risks to economic interests in the Far North. Russia’s northern border checkpoints […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Maria Karnaukh, special to RBTH – November 1, 2013) Many countries would like to tap into the Arctic’s vast hydrocarbon resources, but Russia is the only nation so far to have risked hefty investments in the region. Experts wonder whether Moscow will be successful in selling Arctic oil at $200 or more per […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – November 1, 2013) In early October, Rosneft head Igor Sechin made a brief, enigmatic comment suggesting that there was more than meets the eye behind a Greenpeace protest Sept. 18 against a Gazprom oil rig in the Arctic, an action that resulted in the arrest of 30 people and a black eye […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 29, 2013) State pollster VTsIOM released survey results Monday regarding last month’s Greenpeace protest in the Arctic that indicate more than a third of Russians believe the protest was a foreign plot and more than two-thirds disagree with the group’s message of needing to protect the environment from oil drilling. Armed […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Vladimir Goryachev and Christopher Brennan – October 24, 2013) The Investigative Committee said it had dropped the piracy charges against 30 people who were on board Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise ship, replacing them with accusations of hooliganism. If convicted of the new charges, the 28 activists and two journalists who were taken into custody in September […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 24, 2013) Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya platform, the advance guard of the coming expansion of Russia’s state energy corporations into the Arctic, is a cobbled together bric-a-brac of second-hand parts, some of which date to 1984, environmentalists said. The very presence of the Prirazlomnaya rig in the icy Pechora Sea is the result […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) More than two thirds of Russians believe that Arctic territories should not belong to any state, a poll carried out by the Kremlin-backed pollster Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) said on Friday. Only 17 percent of respondents said the Arctic territories should be divided between states, while 69 percent are convinced that the territories […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 18, 2013) International pressure on Russia over the arrest of Greenpeace activists mounted Thursday as 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners urged President Vladimir Putin to drop the piracy charges against them. The 11 laureates made such an appeal in a letter sent to the Russian president, Greenpeace said. The letter, which […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 10, 2013) The piracy charges, based on which the crew of the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise was arrested, are ungrounded and should be reconsidered, Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the presidential human rights council, said. “I hope this decision will be reconsidered. In any case, we will turn to the prosecutor general. He has potential for […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 3, 2013) The majority of Russians approve of the piracy charges against 28 Greenpeace activists who were detained in late September after trying to climb an Gazprom-owned oil drilling rig in the Arctic to protest its environmental impact. A survey from state pollster VTsIOM published Wednesday showed that 60 percent of the respondents believe […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – September 26, 2013) It is impossible to stop Arctic exploitation, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday, adding that Russia guaranteed that there would be no environmental catastrophe, since the most innovative technologies would be used. SALEKHARD, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District The time for an industrial breakthrough has come in the Arctic, President Vladimir […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. September 24, 2013) Russia’s human rights commissioner Vladimir Lukin said he expected that the Russian authorities would not punish the activists of the Greenpeace environmental organization too severely for their protest rally against oil extraction in the Pechora Sea. “I hope that our authorities will realize that they nevertheless had admirable and noble motives and that they […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Dmitry Litovkin, special to RBTH – September 17, 2013) Petr Veliky, the most powerful ship in the Russian navy, recently crossed the Northern Sea Route for the first time. Although the event was virtually unnoticed amid the escalating military conflict in Syria, pundits believe its implications are also important for international security. The […]
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(Interfax – MURMANSK, September 19, 2013) The strengthening of any country’s military forces in the Artic is in most cases not targeted against any of the neighbors, Russian Foreign Ministry charge d’affaires Anton Vasilyev said. “If we don’t take into account strategic nuclear weapons, which are an element of a different, global strategic dimension, it’s difficult to speak about any […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, September 16, 2013) Russia will reopen a military base in the New Siberian Islands, an Arctic archipelago north of Yakutia, to secure control of the strategic region, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday. “Our forces left the area in 1993, and in the meantime it has become a very important point in the Arctic Ocean, […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 23, 2013) Russia expects that its application to the United Nations to approve its bid for extending the boundary of its part of the Sea of Okhotsk section of the continental shelf will receive consideration in the international organization early next year, said Deputy Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Minister Denis Khramov. Russia also wants the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 22, 2013) Traders that have been looking for the shortest route from Asia to Europe since the days of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot may have finally found it, though the way may be colder than expected and the cargo will probably consist of less silk and spices. Yong Sheng, a 19,000 ton Chinese […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 13, 2013) As the first Chinese merchant ship begins an unescorted voyage from Dalian to Rotterdam on the Northern Sea Route, Russian military officials are pondering how many icebreakers Russia in fact needs to ensure that Moscow is able to continue its dominance of that increasingly important passage between Europe and […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 7, 2013) Two-thirds of the territory of the Russian Federation is covered by permafrost, and the melting of this ice is rapidly “converting a large part of Russia into a swamp,” according to studies by British and Russian scholars reported and discussed this week in Moscow’s “Novyye izvestiya.” Researchers at the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, July 6, 2013) Three new pieces of Russian legislation appear likely to inflict serious collateral damage on that country, eliminating a defender of Lake Baikal against industrial pollution, inflicting new suffering on the already hard-pressed numerically small peoples of the north, and destroying some of the last vestiges of federalism in the […]
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(Interfax – June 28, 2013) Russian Regional Development Minister Igor Slyunyayev believes the borders of the Russian Arctic zone may be specified and determined before the end of 2013. “The borders of the Arctic zone can be specified by an appropriate law. Such a law is now being drawn up. It can be included in the [Arctic zone development] Strategy. […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 28, 2013) Acts of sabotage against Russian facilities are possible in the Arctic shelf development rivalry, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said. He presented several scenarios of external threats to Russia at a conference dedicated to an election article of President Vladimir Putin. “Active development of the Arctic shelf will unavoidably lead to a conflict of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – May 30, 2013) When the virtual hammer came down on the country’s Arctic real estate last week, state-controlled Gazprom managed to get the largest slice. Gazprom vied with Rosneft and was awarded seven disputed areas in the Kara sea shelf and could split the eighth area, in the West Siberian sea, with […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 27, 2013) The personnel of the SP-40 weather station, based on a split ice floe in the Arctic Ocean will be evacuated in mid-June, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi told reporters on Monday. An icebreaker will depart from Murmansk to collect the personnel and equipment. “If the mission goes as planned and the Yamal icebreaker keeps […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – April 25, 2013) ExxonMobil was a highlight of an investment conference in Moscow on Wednesday, attended by U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, where speakers discussed the prospects of U.S. business in Russia. Organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, the event sought to emphasize trade and investment despite political tensions between […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 16, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-moscow-lacks-funds-to.html) Despite Vladimir Putin’s promises to ensure that Russia kept its monopoly in the Arctic as the melting of the ice cap made that region more important, Moscow has cut back plans to build nine new icebreakers, a key to that control, because the finance ministry says there […]
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MOSCOW. March 26 (Interfax) – Russian presidential envoy for international cooperation in the Arctic and Federation Council member Artur Chilingarov has objected to making the Northern Sea Route an international route, and Federation Council member Yury Neyolov has proposed expanding Russia’s Arctic area by adding a number of regions to it. “Options for providing different kinds of assistance to Russia […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Rakteem Katakey & Will Kennedy – March 25, 2013) Russia’s decision to give China a share of prized Arctic exploration licenses as part of a “breakthrough” deal signals how the world’s largest oil and gas producer and the biggest energy consumer are redrawing the global energy map. Under agreements signed during President Xi Jinping’s first state […]
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(Institute of Modern Russia – imrussia.org – Donald Jensen – March 19, 2013) Despite rumors of his waning influence, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin remains one of the most powerful members of Russia’s ruling establishment. Donald N. Jensen, Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, discusses Sechin’s latest “string of triumphs.” […]
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MOSCOW, March 20 (RIA Novosti) Temperatures in the Arctic will warm up twice as fast as in the rest of the world this century, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry has warned. “In the 21st century, the temperature in the Arctic the average [speed] of global warming will rise 2-2.5 times faster,” the ministry’s center responsible for monitoring meteorological trends, […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – March 19, 2013) The big dollop of egg on Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s face since it emerged a strip of water in the Barents Sea ceded by the then-president to Norway contains more than $30bn worth of oil and gas spells trouble for the already weakened premier. Russia and Norway had been negotiating […]
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MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) – Russia would form a reserve of oil and gas fields in its Arctic zone under a proposal contained in the Strategy for Development of Russia’s Arctic Zone and Ensuring National Security to 2020 published on the government website on Wednesday. The fund would help guarantee the nation’s energy security and ensure the steady development of […]
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NOVO-OGARYEVO. Feb 14 (Interfax) – The day former Gazprom (RTS: GAZP) chief Rem Vyakhirev was laid to rest also proved to be grave in terms of the company’s strategic outlook. Russian rivals and officials have been talking seriously about ending the company’s export monopoly, approaching this delicate issue by scrapping the monopoly on LNG exports from offshore fields. Russian producers […]
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MOSCOW. Feb 7 (Interfax) – Russia will soon present the UN with the results of its research on the extent of the continental shelf in the central Sea of Okhotsk, and later in the Arctic Ocean more than 200 miles from the shore, official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich said at a Thursday briefing. “Russia has long […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – January 24, 2013) The federal government will submit its final Arctic territorial claims with the United Nations by the end of the year, the country’s leading Arctic scientist said. Artur Chilingarov, the veteran explorer who led the expedition to plant a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole in 2007, […]
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MOSCOW, January 22 (RIA Novosti) Russia has no plans to allow foreign companies to work independently on the country’s continental shelf but will let them develop offshore deposits there in partnership with Russian state firms, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Tuesday. “As for the admission of foreign companies, no changes are planned, which means foreign companies can […]
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NOVY URENGOI, January 15 (RIA Novosti) – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday called for more intensive exploration of Russia’s oil- and gas-rich continental shelf, stressing that all shelf development projects should be long-term. “The [current] pace of geological surveys on the continental shelf is insufficient,” he said. Medvedev listed a number of reasons for the slow progress, including the […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 31 (Interfax) – The standoff between state and private oil companies over access to Russia’s continental shelf over the past year recalled the cold war of the early 1980s. It was also a combination of clashing ideologies and ambitions, coalitions of allies, war on the periphery, scare tactics, a search for compromises and absurdity. As in the cold […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – December 20, 2012) 2012 saw the climate-change-fueled dash for the Arctic’s riches dominate the environmental agenda. The debate over the high north, the annual nightmare of forest fires and continuing battles between activists and developers over roads, mines and the Sochi Olympics are only likely to intensify next year. Greenpeace activists stormed […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 5 (Interfax) – The Ob River liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker, chartered by the Gazprom Group (RTS: GAZP), successfully completed the world’s first LNG shipment via the Northern Sea Route on Wednesday, the Russian gas giant reported. The tanker, which departed from Norway’s Hammerfest Port on November 7, has arrived at the regasification terminal at Tobata Port in […]
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(RIA Novosti- Moscow, 4 December) By the middle of the 21st century, Russia may lose its sovereignty unless it today clearly identifies its national interests in the Arctic region, Russian Federation Deputy Prime Minister Dmitriy Rogozin said on Tuesday (4 December). “It is extremely important that we place the markers, it is extremely important that we mark the perimeter of […]
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(Voice of America – James Brooke – Nov. 28, 2012) MOSCOW Americans may have seen the downside of climate change when Hurricane Sandy bashed into New Jersey and New York City in October. Some scientists say melting Arctic ice helped to create the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. Russians and Chinese, however, see an upside to ice melting in […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Alex Morales – November 27, 2012) Thawing permafrost threatens to intensify global warming, sending the planet beyond the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of increases that envoys at United Nations climate talks have set as a maximum. Frozen soils that cover a quarter of the land area in the northern hemisphere contain 1,700 gigatons […]
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[Scientists say new signs of global warming in Russian Arctic – AFP – November 22, 2012 – click here for full article] AFP covers warming in the Russian Arctic: The Russian Arctic is losing ice cover and being inhabited by species from the south in the latest sign of climate change, according to a group of Russian scientists. * * […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Alexey Eremenko – October 29, 2012) It is cheaper to send a rocket into space than to drill a single oil well in the Arctic Sea. One Proton rocket launch costs from $80 million to $100 million, while offshore oil wells in the Arctic come in at $100 million to $150 million apiece and […]
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ST. PETERSBURG, October 17 (RIA Novosti)-The record reduction in Arctic pack-ice this year has created favorable conditions for year-long navigation along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in 2013, offering major savings to shipping operators, Russia’s Arctic Institute said on Wednesday. The ice coverage in the Arctic reached its record minimum of 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) in […]
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Roland Oliphant – Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 24, 2012 Gazprom Neft has delayed the start of oil operations at its offshore Prirazlomnoye oil field due to safety concerns, it was reported Friday. The field is now expected to start producing oil in September or October of next year, a source at the company said, Reuters reported. Earlier, the […]
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