Development of the arctic shelf will become priority for Russia

Development of the Russian Arctic shelf should become the priority for Russia during the coming time. The talk about it was on the conference of the President with the Cabinet of Ministers dedicated to development of the Russian Arctic zone.

Last year Russia sent a request to the UN commission on extension of the arctic zone. The Kingdom of Denmark sent the same request. At that, both Russian and Danish areas overlap each other on 500 square kilometers. Already now several tens of the largest deposits of mineral resources are discovered in the Arctic, so there is a struggle for the future of the Russian Arctic. The President was interested in the possibility of extraction of reserves. According to the words of the Minister for natural resources and ecology of Russia Sergey Donskoy, deposits of the Arctic shelf are available for development. As he notes, accessibility of the territories was examined at the time of giving licenses. As we should note, prospects of development of the Arctic shelf are enormous - only the explored reserves of hydrocarbons are estimated as a quarter of all world reserves. The shelf, which is owned by Russia, contains up to 25 percent of oil reserves and up to 50 percent of all explored natural gas reserves of the country. It needs to consider that terrestrial reserves of hydrocarbons are explored more or less reliably, and the shelf of the World Ocean is studied less than on 10 percent. At that, Russia lags behind in many aspects from its colleagues, who actively explore the shelf; large mineral reserves on the mainland and the necessity for huge investments into exploration and development of the arctic shelf moved the start time of this work. But, if to consider the fact that deposits on land are gradually depleted, according to the forecasts, Russia will exhaust oil reserves on the continent during 30 years at current rates of production, then development of the arctic shelf is becoming increasingly important. 49% of already explored resources, which are contained in the arctic shelf of Russia, are stored in the Barents Sea, and 35% - in the Kara Sea. Development of the shelf of the Laptev sea, according to current estimates, can bring up to 8700 million tons, and reserves of the arctic shelf of the East Siberian and Chukchi seas are estimated to be more than 1 milliard tons of hydrocarbons.