Putin makes his first move in race to control the Arctic

Northern Fleet: Vladimir Putin rides in a submersible vessel in the Baltic Sea as Russia announces the resumption of its presence in the Arctic, a project that had been abandoned by the military after the fall of the USSR. 

Sasha Mordovets/Getty

From Newsweek by Elisabeth Braw

In November, the Russian K-550 nuclear ballistic submarine Alexander Nevsky, submerged in the Barents Sea between Russia and the North Pole, successfully launched a missile that travelled its prescribed course to Kamchatka in Russia’s far east.

The Alexander Nevsky thus joins two other Russian nuclear submarines, which have, in the course of the autumn, conducted successful ballistic missile tests.

Russian nuclear submarines have long been based in Arctic waters, just as the United States keeps its fleet in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Still, the missile tests from the icy region sent a chilly message.

The Alexander Nevsky and its brothers – the Vladimir Monomakh and the Yuri Dolgorukiy – belong to Russia’s new Borei-class nuclear submarine fleet, which can carry up to 20 of the country’s new Bulava nuclear missiles.

With its payload of 10 nuclear warheads capable of travelling up to 8,000 kilometres – the distance between, say, Moscow and Chicago – the Bulava is a fearsome weapon.

“Because of the Ukrainian situation, the West is reluctant to take into account that Russia is a nuclear power that’s investing heavily in its nuclear arsenal,” says Pavel Baev, a professor at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo and a former researcher at the then-Soviet Ministry of Defence.

Mighty though they may be, the Borei-class submarines aren’t much larger than the ageing vessels they’re replacing.

“You could argue that a few new nuclear submarines don’t make a difference,” says Baev.

“But Putin is engaging in nuclear brinksmanship. It’s a dangerous game that the West is reluctant to get involved in, and he seems to be betting that that will give him the upper hand.”

Though all five official nuclear weapons states – United States, Russia, France, Britain, China – are modernising their arsenals, Russia’s overhaul of its vast Soviet-era range is particularly ambitious.

 Cape Schmidt with the Marine GeoGarage

Nuclear brinksmanship aside, the military giant has embarked on a mission to leave footprints in the Arctic.

In October, defence minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia will deploy military units along its entire Arctic coast, “from Murmansk to Chukotka” (a distance of 4,700 kilometres).

The armed forces have begun building military facilities on Cape Schmidt in Russia’s far east and on the country’s Arctic Wrangel Island and Kotelny Island; next year the country is scheduled to open an airport at Cape Schmidt.

Earlier this year it reopened its northern Alakurtti military base near the Finnish border (featuring 3,000 soldiers), and on 1 December president Vladimir Putin announced that Russia’s Arctic command has become operational.

The concept of an Arctic race memorably introduced itself when Russian explorers planted a flag on the Arctic seabed in 2007.

Since then, cooperation has been taking precedence.

“But now the Arctic race is heating up, primarily because of Russia,” notes Baev.

“These sharply-increasing military activities don’t make much sense considering that Ukraine is Russia’s military priority right now, but the Arctic isn’t just Putin’s pet project. The Arctic is the one neighbourhood in the world where Russia feels strong.”

(Russia’s Arctic command did not respond to an interview request.)

It’s also the one neighbourhood in the world that has large untapped energy resources: some 22% of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

With climate change making the Arctic ocean’s resources more accessible, energy giants from Statoil to Rosneft are testing the waters.

The melting ice is also making regular shipping more realistic.

Last year 71 ships carrying 1.4 million tonnes of cargo traversed the Arctic northern sea route – which cuts the travelling time from Shanghai to Hamburg by 30% – escorted by Russian icebreakers. “But most international shipping companies don’t favour the Arctic, and China’s massive new container ships can’t get through there,” explains Duncan Depledge, an associate fellow specialising in Arctic geopolitics at the RUSI, a London think tank. Indeed, the 71 Arctic transits pale compared to the 16,596 transits through the Suez canal last year.

But Sweden and Finland, home to regions north of the Arctic circle, are sensing opportunities and have opened Brussels offices promoting industrial development.

Even Poland has launched a GoArctic campaign.

Near the North Pole, as in the Middle East, oil and the military go hand in hand. “In the Arctic, Russia is the undisputed number one,” observes Katarzyna Zysk, an associate professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies.

“But Norway is trying hard to assert its role, especially since the high north plays a significant role in its economic and defence policy. Denmark and Canada are active too, and interest is increasing in the United States as well. These developments are closely followed by Russia, especially given the current tensions with Nato.”

Yet the reopened military bases may be more peaceful than they seem.

“All activities in the Arctic need some sort of security aspect,” says Depledge.

“In much of the Arctic, the military is the only institution that can perform that constabulary function.” 

Here’s the catch: if one country makes military moves, its competitors respond.

Norway, Russia’s closest Arctic neighbour and home to Nato’s first Arctic military operations centre, has been moving troops and equipment north, and prime minister Erna Solberg recently announced that Arctic concerns have caused the country to keep its fighter jets at home rather than sending them on Isis-fighting missions.

In December, Norway introduced an extremely advanced spy vessel that will patrol its Arctic waters.

Indeed, if a second cold war unfolded, the front line would be not just along the Baltic states but right here in the Arctic, between Norway and Russia.

“Russia’s military actions on the European side of the Arctic worry Denmark as well as other Arctic nations,” reports Rear Admiral Nils Wang, commandant of the Danish Defence College and one of the country’s leading Arctic experts

 “Though its reopened military bases also have a coastguard function, Russia is using them to send a strong message to the world and its own citizens that it will defend its Arctic presence if necessary. But the Arctic resources both off-shore and on-shore have already been allocated to the five Arctic coastal nations, so a conflict in the Arctic would more likely be a spillover from conflicts elsewhere, for example Ukraine.”

Denmark, too, has a new Arctic command, while Canada – long an aspiring Arctic superpower – makes its presence known by regularly dispatching naval vessels carrying Canadian flags and sometimes government ministers. 

 Area of the continental shelf of the Russian Federation in the Arctic Ocean

beyond 200-nautical-mile zone

One third of the Arctic is land; one third icy international waters; and one third shallower waters located on continental shelf.

While international law gives the five Arctic nations exclusive economic zones in the waters off their Arctic coasts, the resource-rich continental shelf has become sought-after international real estate. Recently Russia’s natural resources minister Sergey Donskoy announced that 1.2 square kilometres of hydrocarbon-rich continental shelf should belong to Russia.

The country, Donskoy said, will apply to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) for a continental shelf extension next spring.

(A Russian application submitted to the CLCS in 2001 was rejected due to insufficient evidence.) Last year, Canada filed a similar application with the CLCS, claiming rights to 1.7 million square kilometres of Arctic continental shelf.

And in early December, Denmark submitted a CLCS application asserting that it owns the North Pole itself.

Given that International Energy Agency predicts a 35% rise in global energy demand between 2010 and 2035, the quest for the Arctic makes perfect sense.

“Right now, with global energy prices low, it’s not very profitable to invest in Arctic energy exploration, but as far as Russia is concerned, it will remain interested whatever happens,” explains Zysk.

“The Russians feel that they have to move to the Arctic ocean to secure their energy future, and their military presence protects the country’s economic interests. They’re essentially saying, ‘we’re here’.”

That economic potential could spell doom for the Arctic. According to Greenpeace, “inevitable” oil spills would irreversibly harm the pristine region’s polar bears, seals, whales and fish.

“And who would clean up after an oil spill?” asks the environmental group’s Arctic campaigner Charlie Kronick.

“In the Gulf of Mexico, BP was able to deploy hundreds of ships and thousands of workers, and the Macondo well still released around four million barrels of oil.  Because the Arctic has none of the infrastructure or facilities available in the Gulf of Mexico, an oil spill would provoke an international incident when the oil starts travelling underneath the ice.”

Indeed, in spite of global warming, the northernmost continent on earth remains immensely cold.

As Putin made his Arctic command announcement, thermometers on Kotelny Island recorded -30 degrees Celsius.

“The Russian military’s existing Arctic bases are built Soviet-style and are not really appropriate to live in,” notes the Vladivostok-born Baev

 “Even to reach them during the winter is extremely difficult. Arctic threats to Russia by Nato are negligible; in fact, right now nobody is threatening the troops except Mother Nature.”

That’s the sticking point: there is no real enemy.

As the ice of the Arctic ocean melts, its surrounding countries have a stronger interest in cooperation – or in hydrocarbons and shipping – than in confrontation that will feature sacrifice for uncertain rewards.

And for the time being, the Arctic showdown is mostly a play to the gallery.

“Russia is showing people at home that it’s still a major power, and the Canadian government is playing at threat perceptions to show our power and sovereignty in the Arctic,” says Frédéric Lasserre, a professor at the Université Laval in Quebec who specialises in Arctic geopolitics.

“It’s just a play to get votes.”

Links :

• World Ocean review : The limits to the law of the sea

Depactus: Men of extraordinary pursuits - Mark Healey

Depactus: Men of Extraordinary Pursuits - Mark Healey from Depactus

A life spent in the sea, Mark Healey's relationship with his aquatic environments is innate.

From tackling giant surf to becoming one with the undersea world,
he is a man of extraordinary pursuits.

www.depactus.com

The coast

The Coast from NRS Films

Borderlands. The bridge between two worlds.

Where the known meets mystery.

Powerful, unforgiving–and exactly what Hayden Peters was looking for.

Trading the city for the daily sting of salt water on his skin, Hayden reveals how life on the coast brings him balance like no other place on earth could.

The largest vessel the world has ever seen

It’s been a year of remarkable global achievements for Shell’s Prelude project.

From the installation of the first processing module in South Korea to the construction of the largest turret ever built in Dubai.

Take a look at some of the extraordinary highlights from this world first project to liquefy natural gas at sea.

From BBC by David Shukman

Climbing onto the largest vessel the world has ever seen brings you into a realm where everything is on a bewilderingly vast scale and ambition knows no bounds.
Prelude is a staggering 488m long and the best way to grasp what this means is by comparison with something more familiar.
Four football pitches placed end-to-end would not quite match this vessel's length - and if you could lay the 301m of the Eiffel Tower alongside it, or the 443m of the Empire State Building, they wouldn't do so either.
In terms of sheer volume, Prelude is mind-boggling too: if you took six of the world's largest aircraft carriers, and measured the total amount of water they displaced, that would just about be the same as with this one gigantic vessel.
Under construction for the energy giant Shell, the dimensions of the platform are striking in their own right - but also as evidence of the sheer determination of the oil and gas industry to open up new sources of fuel.

 Modules weighing 5,500 tonnes are lifted onto the vessel by huge cranes

Painted a brilliant red, Prelude looms over the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island in South Korea, its sides towering like cliffs, the workforce ant-like in comparison.
Soon after dawn, groups of workers - electricians, scaffolders, welders - gather for exercises and team-building before entering lifts that carry them the equivalent of ten storeys up.
On board Prelude, amid a forest of cranes and pipes, it is almost impossible to get your bearings. Standing near the bow and looking back, the accommodation block that rises from the stern can just be made out in the distance.
The yard, one of the largest in the world, is a mesmerising sight with around 30,000 workers toiling on the usually unseen infrastructure of the global supply of fossil fuels: dozens of drilling ships, oil storage tankers and gas transporters.

Park and produce

Prelude is not only the largest of all of these to take shape in this hive of activity - it also pioneers a new way of getting gas from beneath the ocean floor to the consumers willing to pay for it.
Until now, gas collected from offshore wells has had to be piped to land to be processed and then liquefied ready for export.
Usually, this means building a huge facility onshore which can purify the gas and then chill it so that it becomes a liquid - what's known as liquefied natural gas or LNG - making it 600 times smaller in volume and therefore far easier to transport by ship.
And LNG is in hot demand - especially in Asia, with China and Japan among the energy-hungry markets.

To exploit the Prelude gas field more than 100 miles off the northwest coast of Australia, Shell has opted to bypass the step of bringing the gas ashore, instead developing a system which will do the job of liquefaction at sea.

Hence Prelude will become the world's first floating LNG plant - or FLNG in the terminology of the industry.

In Shell's view, this means avoiding the costly tasks of building a pipeline to the Australian coast and of constructing an LNG facility that might face a long series of planning battles, and require a host of new infrastructure on a remote coastline.

So Prelude will be parked above the gas field for a projected 25 years and become not merely a rig, harvesting the gas from down below, but also a factory and store where tankers can pull alongside to load up with LNG.

The computer animations make it look easy. In practice, the engineering challenge is immense. To speed up construction, the key elements of the processing system are being assembled on land before being installed on the vessel.
During our visit, we witnessed the extraordinary sight of a 5,500-tonne module being winched into position on the deck. Like a massive jigsaw piece, it was a tight fit - given that Shell is planning to squeeze the LNG plant into one quarter of the space you would expect on land.
This was the third of 14 modules.

The installation took less than a day and was successfully completed but there's clearly a lot of work still to do, which is why Shell officials are coy about committing to a date for when Prelude will actually start work. It looks like being several years at least.

Cris Moreno has a big job on his hands.

His task is to make sure Shell's Prelude FLNG project can transfer its liquid cargo in one of the loneliest places on the planet; 200km's off the north-west coast of Australia.

It took thousands of hours to develop the technology needed to deliver the challenge, but Cris is finally ready to test these 'arms of innovation' for the first time.

Bridge too far?

The Shell pitch is that gas, as the cleanest of the fossil fuels, is set to become more important in the coming decades as a far more climate-friendly alternative to coal.
And as China tries to clean up its polluted air, largely caused by coal-burning power stations, as I reported in January, switching to gas would surely make a difference.
Only up to a point, however: the gas-is-cleaner argument only works if the new supplies of gas actually replace coal rather than become an additional source of fuel.
And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that while gas would be a welcome "bridge" between coal and low-carbon energy for the next 20 years or so, in the long term it will need to be phased out, like all fossil fuels, unless a way is found to capture the carbon dioxide that burning it releases.
Shell is banking on gas being in such demand that prices will remain high enough to justify Prelude's cost - which has not been stated but must run into billions.
Obviously there are risks.

The gas price might collapse, if China's economy dips, or Japan restarts its nuclear power stations, closed since the Fukushima disaster, and suddenly needs less gas.

Shell's ambition is to launch a fleet of future Preludes to pioneer a new chapter in the story of fossil fuels by opening gas fields previously thought to be too tricky or expensive to tackle.
As our lift brings us back down to the quayside, the winter sun bathes the dockyard in golden light and convoys of buses ferry the multitude of workers home.
During the night, specialist teams will check for the strength of the welds and the quality of the work. A project of this kind has never been tried before and, like all firsts, Prelude is something of a gamble.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : The gas platform that will be the world's biggest 'ship'

H-Note mobile app from UKHO enables mariners to submit hydrographic data

An ADMIRALTY H-Note App is now available for Android™ devices and iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
This App is aimed at mariners wishing to send hydrographic data to the UKHO via a mobile device.

The ADMIRALTY H-Note App presents a quick and simple new way to report new or suspected dangers to navigation or changes observed in aids to navigation.

The application takes advantage of the mobile device's built-in camera and GPS to help gather important navigational information and to e-mail it to the UKHO using the device's e-mail software once the vessel is in a WiFi or cellular coverage area.

When you submit an H-Note via the App, you will receive an acknowledgement and the information will be used by the UKHO to take immediate action or to consider using the information in the next appropriate revision of a chart or publication.

The H-Note App is available for both Android devices and iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
It can be downloaded on Google Play and on the App Store:

       

Mariners are asked to report information affecting ADMIRALTY Charts and Publications, issues with ENCs and any other any other suspected dangers to navigation direct to the UKHO using the H-Note App which:

• provides a simple form to enter details,
• can automatically include your current location coordinates (via the GPS in your device),
• captures images from your built-in camera,
• loads previously taken photos stored on your device,
• submits the H-Note direct to the UKHO using your device’s email programme,
• keeps a record of all your H-Notes.

Hugh Phillips, Head of Product Management at the UKHO commented:
“The ADMIRALTY H-Note App is a more efficient way for mariners to continue sharing any information with us that could be navigationally significant. Every mariner and every ship, whether sailing internationally or in local waters, has a part to play by serving as our eyes across the oceans.”

Please visit the UKHO website for more information on H-Notes and Maritime Safety.