This morning’s Guardian has a leaked report from EU foreign policy chiefs Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, due to go to all 27 heads of government this weekend, warning of “significant potential conflicts” in the decades ahead as a result of “intensified competition over access to, and control over, energy resources”. Ian Traynor reports:
The officials single out the impact of the thawing Arctic and its emergence as a potential flashpoint of rival claims, pointing to the Kremlin’s grab for the Arctic last year when President Vladimir Putin hailed as heroes a team of scientists who planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed. Developments in the Arctic had “potential consequences for international stability and European security interests”.
“The rapid melting of the polar ice caps, in particular the Arctic, is opening up new waterways and international trade routes,” the report notes. “The increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geostrategic dynamics of the region.”
Meanwhile, the FT is carrying a different angle on Arctic energy: consternation in Ottawa that the US Energy Security and Independence Act 2007 might prohibit the US from buying tar sands from Alberta. In a letter to Robert Gates, CCd to Condi Rice and Samuel Bodman (you’ve got to love the public affairs strategy – sent to the Defense Sec, copied to the Energy Sec), Canada raises concerns about section 526 of the law, which
…limits US government procurement of alternative fuels to those from which the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are equal to or less than those from conventional fuel from conventional petroleum sources. Canada’s oil sands are considered unconventional fuels, and producing them emits more greenhouse gas than conventional production.
So, er, how much more greenhouse gas does oil from tar sands emit? Well, the FT says, “environmentalists say extracting a barrel of crude from oil sands results in five times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions than extracting conventional crude” – though some energy companies dispute the figure.
