Arctic Geopolitics

Arctic Geopolitics!
Abstract The Arctic region is all of the earth north of 600N lol.-an area of 14 million sq mi (36.4 million sq km), or 7 percent of the world's surface area and 14 percent of its land area.

Russia fronts 52 percent of the Arclic Ocean and has jurisdiction over 70 percent of the continental shelves. Moreover, of the approximately 256 million persons living in the six Arctic notions, 244 million are citizens of the USSR. It is plain from these statistics that Russia's position in the Arctic is not just predominant; it is overwhelming.

The same statement is true of the mineral resources of the Arclic. Although not well explored, Russia's nonhydrocarbon mineral wealth probably is proportionate to her Arctic area. Russia's hydrocarbon reserves are far out of proportion to the area controlled; for example. proved plus probable reserves in the West Siberian basin alone are double those of the entire U.S.

Control of the Arctic, therefore, is vital to Russia, but despite her much greater population, she does not yet have manpower to develop and control the Arclic. Development of Arclic resources will take place best in an atmosphere of international peace and cooperation.

INTRODUCTION

In a symposium covering a region as large and as imperfectly known as the Arctic, emphasis inevitably falls on limited but significant facets of its parts. Obviously, it will take years of laborious field studies before the parts add up to the whole; yet, even at this early stage of exploration and development, a regional pattern can be discerned. It is a composite of geography, geology, economics, and demography that can be projected into the future with some confidence. A generation ago the term "geopolitics" would have embraced this composite concept. Stripped of some of its Teutonic overtones, it is still a useful designation, and we venture to apply it to the following overview of the Arctic.

Development of the Arctic is dependent on the subarctic hinterland, with which the region north of the Arctic Circle interfingers and merges. The gross area of land and sea north of 600N lat. measures approximately 14 million sq mi (36.4 million sq km). It includes 3.66

1 Manuscript received, January 5, 1972.

2 GeoSurveys, Inc., and Professor Emeritus, The University of Pennsylvania.

3 The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

HOWARD A. MEYERHOFF2 and A. A. MEYERHOFF' Tulsa. Oklahoma 74101

million sq mi (9.51 million sq km) of the Arctic Ocean, L 78 million sq mi (4.62 million sq km) of the North Atlantic Ocean north of Iceland, and roughly 8.5 million sq mi (22 million sq km) of islands and bordering continents (7 percent of the earth's surface; 14 percent of the earth's exposed land area). Frontage on the Arctic Ocean is as follows: Russia, 52 percent; Canada, 24 percent; Norway, 9 percent; Denmark's Greenland, 8 percent; and the United States, 7 percent.

With a length of 2,000 mi (3,200 km) and a width of 1,600 mi (2,560 km), the Arctic Ocean is an ocean in name only. It is, in fact, a mediterranean (Pratt, 1947, p. 659) arm of the Atlantic Ocean with a single oceanic entryLena Strait-between Spitsbergen and Greenland (Fig. 1). Bering Strait is merely a shallow and geologically ephemeral opening on a 900- mi-wide (1,350 km) continental shelf. Shallow shelves surround these narrow entryways, as well as the Arctic Ocean; of the 5.44 million sq mi (14.1 million sq km) covered by water, about 2 million sq mi (5.2 million sq km) consists of continental shelves. Political jurisdiction of the shelf areas has assumed increasing importance in recent years as their hydrocarbon potential has been revealed, and in this respect Russia is especially fortunate. Approximately 70 percent of the 2 million sq mi (5.2 million sq km) of shelves fringe the USSR, in contrast to 10 percent for Norway, 5 percent for Denmark, 7 percent for Canada, and 8 percent for the United States. Although information regarding prospective oil and gas reserves is far from definitive, the potential for each of the Arctic political units appears to be proportionate to the land and shelf area controlled.

ARCTIC OCEAN

The Arctic mediterranean consists of two distinct basins, separated by the Lomonosov Ridge. Although the ridge does not surface, it rises more than 10,000 ft (3,000 m) above the Eurasian basin on its Atlantic side and approximately 7,000 ft (2,120 m) above the shallower Canadian basin on the Pacific side. The ridge extends without a break from the central Siberian shelf to the North American shelf off El-

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Arctic Geopolitics

lesmere Island. There, it swings westward and parallels the outer margin of other Canadian Arctic Islands. It is composed of continental crust, 450 mi (720 km) wide, with a core of Precambrian rocks that were folded into a linear mountain chain as early as Proterozoic time and were folded again during the early Paleozoic (Fig. 2; Spizharskiy, 1967; Trettin, 1969; Meyerhoff, 1970a, b; Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1971). Its age and the nature of its ties with the two continents bespeak the permanence of the Arctic Ocean and offer no support to the notion advanced by some advocates of continental drift that the ridge severed original ties with northwestern Europe and migrated westward to its present position.

The Lomonosov Ridge has long functioned as a sill, separating the waters of the two basins

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(Meyerhoff, 1970b). The deeper Eurasian depression, which is underlain by oceanic crust, has maintained a connection with the North Atlantic at least since late Proterozoic time. Chemical analyses have shown Atlantic affinities of the waters as far east as the Laptev Sea on the Atlantic side of the ridge, in contrast to the more sluggish Pacific waters in the Canadian basin on the opposite side of the ridge (von Arx, 1962). To enter the Canadian basin, water from the Pacific must cross 900 mi (1,350 km) of shelf that shallows to a 60-ft (18 m) depth, whereas the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift propel warm saline waters through the Lena Strait and across the 700-ft (212 m) depth in the Barents Sea. The climatic effects on land and sea (Worthington, 1970) had significance in the conduct of World War

FIG. I-Index map of Arctic region.

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Arctic Geopolitics

II. Germany's conquest of Norway in no small measure was designed to assure year-round shipments of Sweden's iron ore from Kiruna via the open Norwegian port of Narvik (Fig. 3). Open water at Murmansk provides Russia with its single perennial commercial harbor on the Arctic. As spectacular and historic as the voyage of Esso's Manhattan may have been, it did little more than prove what already was known-that the Canadian Arctic and Alaska (and Siberia east of the Laptev Sea and the Lomonosov Ridge) are not beneficiaries of climatic ameliorization. Pack ice clogs the Canadian basin, which overlies a crust that apparently is neither oceanic nor continental (E. King et ai, 1964, 1966; Vogt and Ostenso, 1970) .

MARGINAL LANDS

Political Geography

The nations with Arctic frontage have markedly contrasted relations and interests with respect to the Polar region. Iceland, with a population of 210,000 persons of mainly Norse descent, lies wholly within the Arctic as defined herein. For more than a millennium it has subsisted on a meager economy and in geopolitical and geological obscurity. Its obscurity, however, is now threatened-geologically, because its 40,000 sq mi (104,000 sq km) lie athwart, and probably terminate, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; geopolitically, because of its strategic position in the North Atlantic corridor to the Arctic. Its volcanic origins severely restrict the economic potential, but its location on one of the earth's major structures has brought it into scientific prominence. The size of the USSR Embassy in the capital city, Reykjavik, shows that Russia is cognizant of that key geographic location in the main entrance to the Arctic.

Spitsbergen (Svalbard), which commands the eastern side of the Lena Strait, is a dependency of Norway. Its "permanent" population is given as 3,000, but it, too, has a transient Russian population exploiting coal and other mineral deposits under license from the Norwegian government. On the west side of Lena Strait, 37,000 inhabitants live on the fringes of Denmark's 840,000-sq mi (2,184,000 sq km) ice-capped island of Greenland. Its geologic affinities are with the North American continent, from which it is separated by the frigid waters of Davis Strait and Baffin Bay (Fig. 4). In the north, only a narrow channel separates it from Ellesmere Island.

Ellesmere Island lies at the northern apex of

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Canada's Arctic Archipelago, which forms a fragmented triangle extending 1,000 mi (1,600 km) north of the nearest point on the mainland, to lat. 83 ", On the south, in the Northwest Territories and in Labrador's Ungava Peninsula, the Precambrian shield forms the undulate surface of the mainland and the Precambrian rocks extend into the islands. There, however, they are partly covered by a flat-lying Paleozoic sedimentary sequence, which abuts a complex fold-mountain range along the Arctic margin. The fold belt was formed from Proterozoic to Devonian sedimentary rocks.

If the 60th parallel is accepted as the southern boundary of the subarctic zone, Yukon and the Northwest Territories and part of the Ungava Peninsula are entirely within Canada's "frozen North." Workers who winter in the mining camps of northern Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, or in the oil and gas fields of northern Alberta, might argue for a 55°N-Iat. boundary, but, even without this southerly extension, 42 percent of Canada lies in the Arctic or subarctic. Of Canada's 21,000,000 inhabitants, fewer than 50,000 live north of the 60th parallel. Even with generous allowance for the oil and gas explorationists now probing the Arctic Archipelago, the population along the broad expanse of the Arctic Ocean numbers less than 5,000. Except for the Dew Line installations, government outposts have policing rather than military functions. Canadians, however, recognize the fact that their future economic development depends largely on the use they make of the North, and a commission is concentrating on the multiple possibilities. Likewise, the government is a major participant in the Panarctic consortium currently carrying on geological, geophysical, and other exploratory activity, primarily for oil and gas, in the Mackenzie delta and the archipelago. A major gas discovery (5 trillion cu ft-plus = 150 billion m"plus) was made during 1970 in Triassic sandstone at King Christian Island (Fig. 1), and additional unevaluated discoveries have been made since, both in the delta and in the archipelago (Porth and Tafel, 1970; Anon., 1971a, b, c, 1972a, b, c, d, e: Bourne and Pallister, 1972; Chilton, et al., 1972; Cleland, 1972; Heise, 1972; R. E. King, 1972).

The Arctic Slope of Alaska has been of concern to the U.S. government only sporadically. Exploration by government geologists in the 1930s led to the creation of a Naval Oil Reserve, and the empty spaces of the North and

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in the Aleutians were a cause for worry during World War II. Yet the base at Barrow is dismantled, as though a United States presence on the Arctic is of secondary importance. Even the 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay has been regarded officially with annoyance and indifference, it would appear, on the basis of the 4-5 year delay in reaching an obvious and urgent decision with reference to pipeline transportation. The hypothetical inconvenience to a small fraction of Alaska's wildlife and possible environmental modification of 0.001 percent of the state's 580,000 sq mi (1,500,000 sq km) apparently weighs more heavily than the need for oil and gas in the other 49 petroleum-short states and more heavily than the loss of tax revenues, not to mention the losses sustained by the petroleum companies during the several years of suspended activity.

Russia has no illusions about the importance of its Arctic and subarctic terrane. It is pushing north as rapidly as limited manpower and financial resources will permit, and perhaps faster than they warrant. Ignorance of the effects of gas-field development on the perma-

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frost environment resulted in the complete loss of one giant gas field (Taz, with an original recoverable reserve of 41 trillion cu ft-c-Vasil"yev, 1968a, b; Omen, 1973) and the destruction of vegetation over many square miles of countryside. The catastrophe was an object lesson in environmental control from which the engineering profession will profit worldwide. The Russians, however, have almost no other place to go. Approximately 90 percent of their 8,600,000 sq mi (22,360,000 sq km) lies north of the latitude of the United States-Canada border, and more than half is north of the 60th parallel. A large part of the southern USSR, east of the Caspian Sea (Kazakhstan, Turkmeniya, Uzbekistan) is inhospitable desert; hence, conquest of the north is vital to Russia's future. Temporarily, however, as a result of the 24th Communist Party Congress directives of 1971, the Russian government has given priority to development of its southern territories over the Arctic-largely because of the costly logistics problems found in the far North.

Regardless, more progress has been made by Russia in utilizing the Arctic than has been

FIG. 4-Index map of Eurasia.

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made in North America, although there still are hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of almost uninhabited forest land or taiga that remain but partly explored. Yet, along the endless stretch of Arctic coast, minute inspection of an up-to-date map reveals only two sections more than 100 mi (160 km) long which lack the name of an outpost or settlement of some kind.

Physical Geography

Climate-In the Koppen-Trewartha climate classification (Trewartha, 1968) , almost the entire region herein referred to the "Arctic" has a polar or subarctic climate. A "polar elimate" is one where tundra or ice cap prevails throughout the year. Precipitation is low-less than 20-22 in. (508-559 mm) per year-and generally is in the 1-12-in. (25-305 mm) range. Ice caps dominate Greenland, parts of Baffin and Ellesmere Islands (Fig. 3), and local areas of Spitsbergen and Iceland. Small mountain glaciers furrow almost all mountain ranges near coasts. A "subarctic climate" belongs to the humid class of climates-cool humid, with precipitation generally in the 12-30-in. (305- 762 mm) range, but locally up to 40-60 in. (1,016-1,565 mm). Where the Japanese Current abuts the southern Alaska coast and where the Gulf Stream reaches Iceland and western Norway, annual rainfall up to 120 in. (3,130 mm) is common, and locally it exceeds 200 in (5,588 mm).

The Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Drift system is highly beneficial to Iceland, the coast of Norway, and northwestern Russia adjacent to Norway. Murmansk is the only major Russian Arctic port which is ice free 365 days a year. A permanent polar pack ice blankets the entire Arctic Ocean. Winter pack ice covers almost all of the Barents Sea and the western North Atlantic to the southern tip of Greenland. The eastern North Atlantic remains ice free.

On the continents of North America and Eurasia, the influence of the Arctic air masses is modified by other climatic factors. In Eurasia the mountain barrier extending from the Alps to the Himalayas blocks the summer monsoon winds and rains from the south. The result is that summer and winter precipitation is scant and no section of subarctic Siberia, except the higher mountain ranges, receives more than 20 in. (508 mm) of rain; the Arctic rim receives 10 in. (254 mm) or less. In European Russia the westerly winds from the Atlantic lose their moisture as they pass over Western Europe,

and only a relatively small wedge east of the Baltic Sea in the vicinity of Leningrad gets more than 20 in. (508 mm) . Temperatures are affected by the immense size of the continent, and in the Lena River basin the annual temperature variation is 1600 or 170°F (71 ° or 77°C). The mean average January temperature is -40°F (-40°C) or less. Although the communists may have made life in Siberia respectable, they have not made it comfortable.

The Western cordillera of North America likewise is a deterrent to the passage of moist winds from the Pacific into the interior, and the patterns of precipitation in the Arctic and subarctic regions of Canada and Alaska closely parallel those of the USSR. Only in southern Greenland, where the cold dry winds from the ice cap meet the warm moist air from the Atlantic, is there heavy precipitation. Although the smaller size of North America is less conducive to such extremes of temperature as are known in Siberia, the difference is one of degree. A short stretch of Alaska's Pacific coast north of the 60th parallel is favored with more clement weather as a result of the warmingand rainy-influence of the Japanese Current.

Geomorphology-Scarcely a major event in the course of geologic history skipped the Arctic; hence the variety of landforms is as great as it is in more southerly latitudes. The only obvious differences are attributable to the climate. Physical processes of weathering predominate over chemical decay; static snow and ice and permafrost have created many of the surficial features, and the mobile ice of glaciers has left fresh scoured and pitted surfaces wherever Holocene melting has exposed the underlying bedrock. The tundra has established itself over large areas, and the kinds of vegetation increase southward into the subarctic, much of which is heavily forested where climatic conditions permit.

Canada, northwest Europe, and parts of central and most of eastern Siberia are underlain by Precambrian shields and old mountain sys· tems. In fact, a substantial fraction of the Arctic rim consists of Proterozoic and middle Paleozoic fold mountains that were formed by compression directed from the Arctic basin (Fig. 2); the submerged Lomonosov Ridge, which belongs to this group of tectonic features, crosses the entire Arctic Ocean and is joined to orogenic structures of the same age and origin in Canada and Siberia (Spizharskiy, 1967; Trettin, 1969). The Arctic basin obviously has functioned as an oceanic basin at

Arctic Geopolitics

653

least since middle Proterozoic time, and no variety of plate-tectonic prestidigitation can account for its geologic borders.

The only active volcanic region is Iceland, on the subarctic fringe of the region. It can be described with some oversimplification as a block-faulted lava plateau which is under compressional stress (Einarsson, 1965; Einarsson and Meyerhoff, 1974). The lavas have been folded, and flank dips range from 10° to 45°. Locally, the lavas have been folded to the limits of cohesion in competent basalt, and the notion that the tension on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is pulling the island apart appears baseless. Comparison with the Harney section of the Columbia Plateau discloses many similiarities.

In Eastern Canada the Precambrian extends from the St. Lawrence River northward through all of the Ungava Peninsula and reappears in Baffin Island. Precambrian rocks probably underlie much of Greenland's ice cap, and an imperfectly known sedimentary basin lies between Greenland and the mainland in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay (Fig. 3). The shield also stretches from Lake Superior north-northwestward, west of Hudson Bay, to the channels separating the mainland from the archipelago; a salient forms the core of Boothia Peninsula. The Ungava Peninsula is a flat upland that rises in elevation toward the Quebec-Labrador boundary, where local elevations are as high as 7,000 ft (2,210 m) in the Torngat Mountains. West of Hudson Bay the elevation is low, and in the bay it drops below sea level; in the south a basinal structure contains an Ordovician-Devonian stratigraphic section. Mining is the only basis for settlement on the heavily glaciated surface; a mining camp, Yellowknife, serves as the capital of the Northwest Territories.

West of the shield, flat-lying Paleozoic sedimentary rocks form a low plain drained by the Mackenzie River (Figs. 1,2). Northwest Canada's three great lakes-Athabasca, Great Slave, and Great Bear-which feed the Mackenzie, lie along the unconformable Paleozoic-Precambrian contact. The Mackenzie River is seasonally navigable, and its lowland is the site of numerous settlements and of increasing exploratory activity for oil and gas. Mesozoic rocks cover areas that increase in size northward toward and beneath the Mackenzie delta in the Arctic Ocean, and westward along parts of the Rocky Mountain front. On the west the M ackenzie Mountains and the Rocky Mountain system form the boundary of the lowland, and they, with the Pacific mountain system and in-

termontane lowland drained by the Yukon River, compose the whole of Yukon Territory and adjacent sections of southeastern Alaska (Fig. 3).

The Arctic Archipelago is a composite geomorphic region, merging on the south with mainland geology but dominated by a thickened platform sequence of Paleozoic rocks, extensively covered northward and westward by a Mesozoic section. The platform sequence merges with the thick section of the folded Franklinian geosyncline of the central part of the archipelago (Fig. 2). The folding originated by pressure from the Arctic Ocean; hence the deformation is more subdued southward, and in the western islands the orogenic structures are now covered in part by a late Tertiary and Quaternary coastal plain. Elsewhere the Franklinian fold belt borders the ocean as far east as northern Greenland (Fig.

2) .

Although confirmation currently is lacking, the Franklinian structures may continue westward beneath the Mackenzie delta, to emerge in the Brooks Range of Alaska. The Brooks Range has a core of folded Proterozoic to Middle Devonian rocks that trend east-west, parallel with the Arctic coast. Devonian and pre-Devonian compression was from the north, but Laramide compression was from the south. A flexure in Laramide structures occurs along the Yukon-Alaska boundary, in approximate alignment with the so-called orocline of the St. Elias Mountains in the Pacific Mountain system (Fig. 3). South of the Brooks Range the Yukon River drains a complex intermontane belt. On the North Slope (Alaska north of the Brooks Range), Laramide fold-fault structures diminish in size northward and form a foothill zone with some Appalachian-type topography. Toward the coast a thickened Mesozoic section is buried beneath a thin and broken Tertiary cover and a Quaternary coastal plain that broadens westward toward Barrow. Reconnaissance geophysical work has identified Brooks Range structures submerged and buried in the Chukchi Sea,> extending toward the Chukotsk Range of Siberia.

Northeastern Siberia is a mountainous coun-

• Geophysical surveys by the U.S. Geological Survey during parts of 1969, 1970, and 1971, partly in the USGS cutter Storis, revealed that the Brooks Range structures continue eastward beneath the Chukchi shelf toward the Mackenzie delta, and westward into Siberian waters (USGS news releases first appeared December 5, 1969).

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try with southwest-northeast en echelon ranges extending to the coast as far west as the Kolyma River (Fig. 4), which drains a sizable north-facing basin. Westward, a coastal plain fringes the coastal area as far as the Lena River, which reaches the Arctic through a rather narrow, highland-flanked valley (Fig. 4). Mountainous terrain of the Taymyr Peninsula also extends to the coast and into the offlying Severnaya Zemlya islands; from the Yenisey valley westward to the Baltic shield, however, a vast plain is broken only by the Ural Mountains, which loop into the Yugorskiy Peninsula and thence into Novaya Zemlya. West of the Urals the plain is drained by relatively short 'streams-the Dvina and Pechora. In western Siberia, however, the Ob', Irtysh, and Yenisey Rivers rise far south of the Arctic coast in the well-watered mountains of the Chinese and Outer Mongolian borders. In the south the spring thaw begins in April, and floodwaters pour into the still-frozen North in such volume that as much as 200,000 sq mi (520,000 sq km) of the West Siberian plain may be flooded in any year. River navigation is uncertain and hazardous, and ground transportation, as well as habitation, is nearly impossible over large areas.

Thus, the mountainous eastern region and the flooded western region severely restrict development of vast segments of the Siberian Arctic. Neither the north-flowing Mackenzie in Canada nor the northwest-flowing Yukon poses comparable problems in North America-but neither do these regions contain three of the world's largest oil and gas basins, as does Russia's problem area.

MINERAL RESOURCES

It is evident from the geography of Arctic and subarctic regions that the only comfortably habitable areas are the islands and coastal margins that are warmed by the Gulf StreamNorth Atlantic Drift and the Japanese Current. The beneficiaries are Iceland, coastal Norway, the Murmansk patch of northwestern Russia, and a small segment of Alaska within the latitudinal limits under consideration. Even in these restricted localities, the climate might more accurately be described as tolerable rather than comfortable. Significantly, these are the only places where fishing acquires economic importance. Elsewhere there are but two possible reasons for settlement and development--economic and military. In the subarctic, hunting and lumbering have some economic

potential, but the major economic attractions are the nonrenewable mineral resources (Quineau, 1961). Although the airplane has transformed the accessibility of the entire Arctic, it has had little effect on exploitation of bulk materials such as the base and ferrous metals, coal, and petroleum-all of which depend on ground transportation. Gold and platinum and, more recently, uranium are almost the only products valuable enough to pay for the air freight. Water transportation is available the year round in the restricted "comfortable" localities listed. Elsewhere it is available for the short summer season, and even then it generally is hazardous. Technology is beginning to expand the possibilities of mineral exploitation. Nearby coal deposits, especially in Siberia, have made it possible to reduce bulk ores to the metal content by concentration and refining. Oil and gas within pipable distance of large mineral deposits now are offering the same opportunity for bulk reduction. The recent development of outsize freight planes has cut the cost of air transport materially. Even so, mineral deposits-whether metal or hydrocarbonmust be of great size to defray the heavy costs of exploration, development, processing, shipping, and manning, and still yield a profit. Ample illustration can be found in the story of Yellowknife, or in the less remote INCa nickel operation at Thompson, or the iron ore developments along the Quebec-Labrador boundary where the ore moves by rail to ports on the St. Lawrence estuary. It is a safe guess-if one may paraphrase the playwright and poet Goldsmith-that many a mineral deposit exists with boom unseen, to waste its value on the Arctic air.

Mineral Resources Other than Hydrocarbons

Canada--Canada's mineral industry, which grosses more than $4 billion annually, makes a 7 percent contribution to her export trade (Engineering and Mining Jour., 1969a). Of the $2 billion of metals mined, approximately three fourths comes from the Precambrian shield (Lang et al., 1970), but the recently published mineral map (Douglas, 1970) of the country shows and lists a scant 11 present (and past) mining operations in the Northwest Territories with annual output worth approximately $125 million (Fig. 3). All mines are metal producers, and the assortment is large-gold, uranium, silver, the base metals, tungsten, nickel, and some byproducts such as cadmium and cobalt. A group of four mines just south of the

Arctic Geopolitics

NWT border on Lake Athabasca, Saskatchewan (Fig. 3), might be considered as one and added to make an even dozen. They produce uranium and gold. Except for a lone mining camp on Hudson Bay, every other operation is at or near the western margin of the Precambrian and has easy access to the three great Canadian lakes and/ or the Mackenzie River. Although mineralization of the shield is zonal and large areas are barren, the low density of mining activities in the Northwest Territories stands in marked contrast to the numerous operations in Ontario and Quebec. Surely, the economics of accessibility is a dominant factor which causes the contrast. This statement is certainly true for a very large iron ore deposit that was discovered in 1962-1963 between Hudson Bay and the southern part of the Northwest Territories.

The second major mineral province is in the Western cordillera of the Yukon (Little et al., 1970), which has 10 mining camps. One produces asbestos and the others metals-primarily gold, but some silver, and one mine produces lead-zinc with the byproduct cadmium. Total annual value of the mine products is approximately $25 million. Nearly all gold was recovered from placers, but most of the dredging has been suspended or abandoned. Here, too, the density of mining activities contrasts markedly with the burgeoning activity south of the 60th parallel in British Columbia. One may suspect that accessibility and latitude are more potent factors than geology. Although mineralization has been reported in the Ungava Peninsula north of 60° latitude, exploratory work has not led to exploitation. The metals found in the archipelago remain undisturbed, but they include iron ore and zinc on Baffin Island, leadzinc near Resolute, and copper on Victoria Island (Fig. 3; Engineering and Mining Jour., 1969a; Thorsteinsson and Tozer, 1970).

Reconnaissance surveys, including a continuing aeromagnetic survey, have not disclosed new ore bodies in large segments of the shield; nor have they deciphered all of the intricacies of Precambrian structure. The linear pattern of the paired gold belts, the unique occurrence of the Sudbury Ni-Cu-Ag complex, the hematitic ores in parts of the Proterozoic sequencethese and other types of mineralization in the southern part of the shield bespeak a variety of geologic situations that call for more definitive and sophisticated exploratory work. Gulf Oil's discovery of uranium on Rabbit Lake in northern Saskatchewan, not far from the

655

boundary of the Northwest Territories, illustrates the point (Fig. 3). Having spent one long season in central Quebec looking for potentially economic mineral deposits, one of us (HM) has no illusions about the difficulties that discovery and development present. Foreseeable shortages will, in time, warrant a closer look.

Alaska-The gross mineral industry of Alaska is valued at approximately $300 million, of which all but $40 million is attributable to oil and gas production (U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1971). Approximately $27 million of the nonpetroleum output is in structural materials-sand, gravel, and stone. The rest of the industry can be characterized best as discouraging. Although gold production seems to be holding steady at 21,000 troy oz (600,000 g), this figure is a drop from the 250,000-oz (7,100,000 g) annual output 20 years ago. The decline began in the boom years of the late 1950s, and in 1964 one of us (HM) failed to find a single dredge in operation in the Nome, Tanana, and Yukon districts, although a few were manned by maintenance crews in a futile hope that gold might be revalued (Fig. 3).s

Persistent field studies by U.S. Geological Survey geologists over the years have uncovered many deposits of a large assortment of metals, and with every recent shortage of mineral raw materials there has been a 'surge of exploratory activity by private industry. In 1969, for example, 17 companies had field parties looking for, or testing, known copper deposits, one of them on the south flank of the Brooks Range; yet there was only one producer. Deposits of nickel, iron ore, and uranium were receiving exploratory attention, and efforts were being made to increase the number of operations already producing modest quantities of the platinum metals, tin, and mercury. Byproduct lead and antimony complete the list of metals in actual production, and the list can be supplemented by the nonmetal barite. Ironically, the strongest continuing stimulant to exploration and development is Japan, whose avid search for minerals is being furthered by cooperating American companies. Paradoxically, the coal-mining industry has held its own for several years, although at a level somewhat below its peak of 860,000 tons in the mid- 1950s. Its potential market has been restricted and its future is uncertain as production and distribution of oil and gas increase within the

5 The recent revaluations of U.S. currency may alter somewhat this last statement.

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state; but in some localities coal will no doubt remain the most accessible fuel for some time to come.

Alaska's misfortune is its small population, together with a limited regional market and marginal location with respect to the 48 conterminous states. The long-range future is brighter, because Alaska's mineral wealth will be in demand as shortages and international competition for raw materials grow.

W estern Europe-The Baltic shield has many of the characteristics of Canada's Precambrian shield, but it is not as extensive or as highly mineralized. It flanks and underlies the Baltic Sea, extending northward into Sweden, part of Norway, all of Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of the USSR (Fig. 4). Compared with the Canadian shield, it is densely settled, geologically better known, and more intensely exploited. The mining industry is nearly 3 centuries old. Among Norway's numerous mines, the ilmenite-magnetite mine in the southwestern part of the country probably is the largest, and the seemingly inexhaustible high-grade iron ore extracted at Kiruna, Sweden, has long been prized as a "sweetener" for the low-grade ores native to Great Britain, Germany, and Luxembourg. Finland has the largest copper deposit in Europe, but her valuable nickel deposit in the Kola Peninsula was lost as a result of the Russo-Finnish war early in World War II. She does, however, share the iron ores of the Kola Peninsula with her Russian neighbor. The Caledonian range that forms Norway's northwestern coast has yielded few minerals, but in Spitsbergen coal has been mined for at least half a century-at present, mostly under license by Russia. In Denmark's Greenland, the most important commercial operation terminated when the vein deposits of the sodium aluminum fluoride, cryolite, were finally mined out. It was the world's only known commercial cryolite ore body (other commercial deposits may have been discovered recently in the USSR), but was no match for other ores used by the burgeoning aluminum industry, which even now is having trouble finding sufficient fluorspar for a flux. A lead-zinc deposit, which has been mined at Mesters Vig, Greenland (Fig. 3), suggests the likelihood of inaccessible mineral wealth in the Precambrian rocks buried under the ice cap.

Russia-Although the threat of German conquest of Russia east of the Urals in World War II gave considerable impetus to the development of Siberia, the region west of the Urals

still is the most densely populated and intensely industrialized segment of this vast country (Fig. 4). Its mineral resources are not fully known, much less appraised, especially in the Arctic and subarctic parts. In European Russia, industry long depended on coal and lignite for energy, although some hydropower was used. Limited transportation facilities and technology retarded conversion to oil and natural gas, but contracts for pipe with Western European countries-notably Germany-are speeding the changeover. Nonetheless, the USSR is stilI the world's largest producer and consumer of coal and lignite.

One of the gravest problems the Russians have had to face is the physical separation of coal and iron ore-in northern Europe, the Ural region, and Western Siberia. For example, the iron and steel complex at Cherepovets (not far from Leningrad) uses iron ore from the Kola Peninsula, 900 mi (1,350 km) north, and coking coal from Vorkuta, 1,700 mi (2,700 km) northeast in the Pechora basin on the west flank of the Polar Urals. The Kola Peninsula also supplies apatite, which is Russia's principal raw material for its superphosphate plants, as well as much of its nickel from the nickel-copper-cobalt deposits taken from Finland. Aluminum production is dependent on nephelite to supplement limited reserves of bauxite. Whether because of deficiencies in mineralization or exploration, the Ural Mountains north of the broad pass between Perm' and Sverdlovsk (Fig. 4) contribute little mineral wealth to the Russian economy. Peak elevations generally are below 6,000 ft (1,800 m), but at this latitude the range is a southern peninsula of the Arctic tundra with average winter temperatures of -40°F (-40°C).

The region which most Westerners call "Siberia" is divided by Russians into four separate areas (Fig. 5). The first is Soviet Central Asia, south of the Urals but including Kazakhstan, as well as the neighboring so-called autonomous Moslem republics of the USSR. Western Siberia is the vast lowland north of Karaganda, east of the Urals, south of the Arctic Ocean, and west of the Yenisey River. What the Russians call "Eastern Siberia" is the region north of Mongolia, east of the Yenisey River, west of the Lena River, and south of the Arctic Ocean. The region east of the Lena River is known as the Soviet Far East and Maritime Region. The Russians do not include Soviet Central Asia, the Soviet Far East, or the Maritime Region within Siberia. Soviet Central Asia is excluded

Arctic Geopolitics

r,09

,'"

L·~ -, ~

-\1 C --J:_ __

\ ~.

657

658


from detailed discussion here, because no part of it lies in the Arctic or subarctic.

In Western Siberia (Fig. 4), the development of mineral resources for heavy industry until the early 1960s was centered almost entirely in the Kuznetsk basin, one of Russia's principal coking coal producers. The Kuznetsk basin is east and southeast of Novosibirsk, a city of nearly 1,000,000 inhabitants at 55°N lat. Industrialization began with a coke-chemical industry, and a zinc refinery was added at Belovo in 1930. In 1932 an integrated iron and steel plant began operation at Novokuznetsk (then known as Stalinsk), but the iron ore had to be shipped 1,100 mi (1,760 km) from the southern Urals (Fig. 4). Construction of a direct rail line from Magnitogorsk to Novokuznetsk to relieve pressure on the more devious Trans-Siberian Railway brought to light the Karaganda coal basin, midway between the two terminals (Fig. 4). Karaganda, now a city of 500,000, has become a secondary industrial center, but Karaganda coal, which lacks coking characteristics, did not meet any of the needs of the iron and steel industry. The economics of the latter was relieved partly by rail transport of iron ore to Novokuznetsk and of coking coal to Magnitogorsk on the return trip. PostWorld War II growth has added ferrous alloy and aluminum reduction plants and a second iron and steel mill. During the past decade the discovery of vast oil and gas pools in the West Siberian basin was followed by the delivery of oil in 1964, and gas in 1966, to the SverdlovskChelyabinsk industrial area, and of oil and gas in 1969-1971 to the Kuznetsk sector.

Obviously, Western Siberia is destined for rapid industrial growth in these areas, but north of 60°-even 57°-the outlook is far from good. D. V. Belorusov tells why (1967 [1969]) :

Almost 40% of the West Siberia plain is covered with forest. The middle Ob' basin has an extensive swamp cover, and in West Siberia as a whole, swamps account for 40%-50% of the total area. Our limited knowledge about the region and the extensive swamp cover greatly hamper . . . development. . . . The climate is characterized by extreme continentality-a harsh winter and a relatively warm summer. . . . While the mean annual temperatures, say, are -6.7°C at Salekhard (on the Ob' at the Arctic circle) and -9.1° at Novyy Port (on the Ob' estuary at 68°), they rise substantially toward the south: - 0.4 ° at Shaim (600N) and + 1.6° at Tyumen' (57°N).

The region is characterized by poor transport development, especially year-round services. . .. There are very few motor roads .... The few that do penetrate northward are not adapted to heavy loads, . , , They are out of action during the spring and autumn mud season.

The principal means of transportation at the present time is the stream network made up of the Ob' and ~rtysch and, their t~ib~taries. . . . Both in spring floodmg and dunng periodic summer freshets, the rivers often flood their banks and merge with lakes and swamps. The middle course of tbe Ob' then reaches a width of .100 km .. , , The absence of year-round transport ser~lces and the difficulty of building roads, com?JumcatlOn lines, poor transmission lines and pipelines m the swampy terrain greatly complicate the development of the region.

Like Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia (Fig. 4,) is well supplied with energy resources, especially brown coal, which is mined by stripping and is burned in mine-site thermal power plants. S~pplementary energy comes from hy?roele:tnc &enerators on the Yenisey River and Its major tnbutary, the Angara. Much of this region is mountainous, and power sites are numerous. The Angara drains Lake Baykal (Fig. 4), the deepest freshwater body in the world. The lake lies close to the drainage divide with the Lena River, which appears to have captured some of the Yenisey's regional headwate:s. The highlands along the Mongolian border still supply the lake and the Angara with a large volume of water, and the topography between Irkutsk (population, 425,000) and Krasnoyarsk (population, 575,000) provides excellent power sites. Most of Eastern Siberia's population is concentrated in these two industrial centers on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and the natural resources of the region are funneled into them for processing and transportation. Both cities are south of 600N lat., but settlements north of the rail line, with the exception of Yakutsk on the Lena River, are mostly small mining and lumber camps. One of the largest and oldest is the Noril'sk district, just east of the Yenisey River at 68°N (Fig. 4). Now a community of 175,000 inhabitants, it is a major supplier of nickel, copper, titanium, vanadium, platinum metals, and a variety of minor metals. Long dependent on local coal deposits, its recent growth has been accelerated by natural gas supplied from the vast nearby gas fields (mainly Messoyakha field) in the West Siberian basin.

Eastern Siberia is essentially a highland of complex mountains and plateaus, flanked on the west and east by the Yenisey and Lena Rivers, respectively. A broad lowland just north of 70° extends across the entire east-west width of the region, but its central or Taymyr section is separated from the Arctic Ocean by a mountam ranze that also forms the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, which ends at 82 ON lat. The

Arctic Geopolitics

geology of the region south of the Taymyr lowland, unlike that of Western Siberia, is that of a shield rather than a basin area, and favors mineralization rather than hydrocarbon accumulation. The assortment of metals mined in the Noril'sk district is merely a sample of what the region as a whole contains. Elsewhere gold, iron, molybdenum, zinc, lead, antimony, tungsten, asbestos, and rare earths augment the list; yet, from its very nature, the country is but fractionally explored to the point of resource evaluation, and even less of it is developed.

The Soviet Far East (Fig. 4) in many ways resembles Eastern Siberia. South of the upper Lena River a jumbled series of ranges rises along the boundary with eastern Outer Mongolia, and with the Inner Mongolian and Manchurian sections of China, without actually defining the border. The Amur River separates Russia and China as far south and east as the city of Khabarovsk, where the Amur turns northeast into Russian territory (Fig. 4). The boundary turns south at Khabarovsk, and the Russians occupy a lowland south to Vladivostok and the coastal mountain range of the Primor'ye region east of the lowland. East of the middle and lower Lena River, a broad belt belonging to the Circum-Pacific mountain system extends unbroken to the Bering Strait and Sea in the north, although it is penetrated southward from a narrow Arctic coastal plain by the broad valleys of the Indigirka and Kolyma Rivers. Farther south, the mountain belt terminates at the Sea of Okhotsk, which separates it from the mountainous Kamchatka Peninsula. Offshore from the Vladivostok extension, Sakhalin Island forms a narrow closure for a northern triangular bight of the Sea of Japan.

A recent visitor to this part of the USSR aptly called it "Russia's Wild East." From Lake Baykal to Khabarovsk, a distance of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), there are numerous grim frontier towns spaced along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which now follows the long loop around the China border; conflicting ideologies caused the closing of the shortcut to Vladivostok through Harbin in Manchuria. Irkutsk, at 62°N lat., is connected with the railroad by a poor 600-mi (960 km) road, and with Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk, by 1,500 mi (2,400 km) of very poor road. Except for these railroads and for a limited road network radiating from Irkutsk, this part of the USSR is a trackless wilderness

659

with some seasonal river transportation and tenuous ties by air with the south. Yet it has been explored superficially, and some of the larger mineral deposits are being exploited.

Of special interest are tin and diamond deposits in the Soviet Far East. Following the early development of the tin mines, Russia threatened to disrupt the International Tin Council by flooding the western market. Suddenly realizing that the tin was needed in her domestic market, Russia since has absorbed nearly all production. According to welIfounded reports, Russia cherished some hope of cracking the diamond trade after the diamond mines were in production, but most of the output was industrial and, cannily, the Russians made a deal with the DeBeers' interests to handle whatever gem diamonds are recovered. This region as a whole has much the same mineral potential as Eastern Siberia, but manpower for development is more than scarce; people are reluctant to settle in a rugged, isolated country that has the dubious distinction of having the coldest winter temperature ever officially recorded outside of Antarctica.

Almost alI of Russia's northern regions have been explored, at least superficially. At one time the government reported as many as 1,000 parties in the field. Although the inventory of mineral resources is by no means complete, the Russians have a fair knowledge of the potential wealth which the tundra and taiga contain. Development, however, has suffered from several handicaps. The severest, without question, is manpower. In a country of 8.65 million sq mi (22.36 million sq km), an evenly spread population of 244 million is only 28 inhabitants per square mile (11 per sq km). Actually, more than three quarters of the population live west of the Urals, and about 30 percent of the total is urban, living in cities of 200,000 or more. The only settlements north of 60° that attain urban stature are Irkutsk, at the west end of Lake Baykal, and Murmansk and Arkhangel'sk, in European Russia (although the population of Leningrad at 59°55'N is 4,000,000). The number of workmen and supervisory personnel available for activities in the north is small, and it will continue to fall far short of the region's potential for years to come.

Even socialism requires capital for development-a point which Lenin repeatedly emphasized. However, Russian capital has been directed so completely into heavy industry, armament, and space projects that simple consumer needs have had low priority, and development

660


of the North now is even lower on the waiting list. Specific government objectives have prompted the intensive development of specific districts-e.g., the tin and diamond deposits of the Far East (and far North!). Siberia's resources, known and unknown, exceed the needs of Russia's comparatively low population-toarea ratio. Currently, development seems to be geared to specific areal growth and to national requirements for specific raw materials. Utilization of the swamplands of Western Siberia and their underlying oil and gas fields, and of the taiga uplands as well as the frigid mountains of Eastern Siberia and the Far East, probably will await more critical needs for their mineral wealth.

HYDROCARBON RESOURCES

Petroleum is an old story in the Arctic and subarctic of North America. It was discovered at Norman Wells (Fig. 3) in the Mackenzie lowland in 1920, but transportation problems confined its use to the sparsely settled surroundings until World War II. Then, to meet military needs, the Canol pipeline was built to a refinery at Whitehorse, and the refined oil was piped to Skagway and Fairbanks, and to Watson Lake airfield in Yukon Territory (Fig. 3). Government exploration of Alaska's North Slope led to the creation of a large U.S. Naval Reserve east of Barrow in 1937, and to small local production for use at Barrow. Except for the World War II emergency, the demandsupply situation scarcely warranted further development at that time. New exploration was not undertaken until the late 1950s, but the potential of the North was not fully appreciated for another decade.

Canada-The history of Canada's oil industry is coincident with that of the U.S., starting about the time of Drake's Titusville discovery, mostly in the Paleozoic fields of Ontario. It did not assume importance until the Leduc discovery near Edmonton, Alberta, in 1947. Since then intensive exploration has pushed north in the Prairie provinces, from the U.S. border into northeastern British Columbia, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. In the Alberta or Western Canadian basin, proved reserves of oil and condensate now total 11 billion bbl (1.5 billion tons), and gas reserves total 55 trillion cu ft (1.6 trillion m").

Exploration continues there, but attention is also being directed northward, where a consortiu-n of private companies is collaborating with government geologists in examining and testing

the Mackenzie delta and the Arctic Archipelago (Fig. 3). The Mackenzie delta and the contiguous and related Amundsen Gulf cover an area of 64,000 sq mi (166,000 sq km). Seismic data indicate that part of this area is underlain by 33,000 ft (10,000 m) or more of sedimentary rocks, including both Paleozoic and Mesozoic sequences. One weI! has been drilled into the Cambrian. and Proterozoic-Cambrian evaporites are known to be present in the south (Bassett and Stout, 1967). These evaporites have formed anticlines, domes, and ridges. Subsurface relations with the structures of Alaska's Brooks Range, which plunges under the deltafloodplain from the west, and with the Franklin Mountains, which plunge from the northnortheast, are obscure. Drilling already has established the presence of gas, and Imperial Oil Ltd.'s H-25 Atkinson well encountered oil at 5,750 ft (2,360 m) in Lower Cretaceous sandstone (Porth and Tafel, 1970). Additional discoveries have been made in the delta-in strata of Tertiary, Late Cretaceous, and Early Cretaceous ages. Their size and commercial importance still are undefined. An estimate of 50 billion bbl (6.85 billion tons) of recoverable oil and 100 trillion cu ft (2.9 trillion m") of gas for this basin does not seem out of line on the basis of stratigraphic and structural data now available (Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1971).

The Sverdrup basin (Figs. 2, 3) covers an area of approximately 125,000 sq mi (320,000 sq km) along the northwestern margin of the Arctic Archipelago. It is a smaller successor basin (Halbouty et al., 1970) to the Franklinian geosyncline, which extended from Melville Island northeast of the Mackenzie delta to northeastern Greenland a distance of 1,100 mi (1,760 km; Fig. 2). The Franklinian geosyncline contains a Proterozoic through Late Devonian sedimentary sequence ranging from 36,000-39,000 ft (11,000-12,000 m) in the miogeosyncline to possibly 57,000 ft (18,000 m) in the eugeosynclinal section in Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Islands. The Sverdrup basin, which is 600 mi (1,000 km) long and has a maximum width of 260 mi (430 km) , contains an incomplete sequence, 46,000 ft (14,000 m) thick, of Mississippian-earliest Pennsylvanian (Bashkirian) through middle Eocene sedimentary rocks. Middle Eocene folding terminated basinal sedimentation. In a basin of this size and duration. considerable lateral and vertical variations in lithology are found, but the section in nearly all the systems represents a change from a shelf facies on the southeast to a basinal

Arctic Geopolitics

facies on the northwest. Numerous diapirs in the Sverdrup basin are believed to be formed from evaporites of Pennsylvanian age (Thorsteinsson and Tozer, 1970), although evaporites of Cambrian through Devonian ages also may have contributed to the diapirs. Eocene orogeny folded the late Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and early Tertiary rocks, and refolded the preMississippian rocks on which the younger sequence lies unconformably. Prospecting has been extensive but drilling has been limited. A gas discovery in Triassic sandstone on King Christian Island (Fig. 3) suggests the presence of a field of 5 trillion cu ft (150 billion m-) or more, with possibly 1 billion bbl (0.14 billion tons) of liquid hydrocarbons; a subsequent 1971 discovery in Kristoffer Bay, Ellef Ringnes Island, 50 mi (80 km) farther north, in the same sandstone as that at King Christian, promises to be nearly as big (Heise, 1972). More recently, oil has been discovered in the Arctic Archipelago (Anon., 1972a).

The only other Arctic sedimentary basin in Canada that merits attention for petroleum exploration is the 40,000 sq mi (104,000 sq km) of Baffin Bay between the Ungava Peninsula and Greenland (Figs. 1, 3). Marginal outcrops, on islands and peninsulas fringing Greenland's ice cap and in southeastern Baffin Island, reveal the presence of a Late Cretaceous-early Tertiary stratigraphic section, mostly with Arctic faunal and floral affinities. Although the bay is shared by Canada and Denmark, the sedimentary rocks shelve off Greenland, in a bench 250 mi (400 km) long and 60 mi (100 km) or less wide. The possibility that a sedimentary basin is present in the deeper water of the bay has not been determined. Exploration on the shelf under concession from Denmark is in progress, but the results have not been publicized.

Greenland-Quite apart from the Baffin Bay shelf, Greenland's eastern margin ultimately may stir exploratory interest (Figs. 2, 3). This Atlantic border was active tectonically during Proterozoic and much of Paleozoic time (Haller, 1969, 1971). The geosynclinal Proterozoic sedimentary section is as thick as 30,000 ft (9,000 m). These rocks unconformably underlie an early Paleozoic sequence that was folded during the Caledonian disturbance. Devonian rifting produced grabens in which 20,000- 25,000 ft (6,000-7,500 m) of continental "Old Red Sandstone" accumulated. Mild Acadian deformation was followed by late Paleozoic marine transgression from north to south, and by the deposition of a sequence of Mesozoic

661

rocks. Sedimentation was intermittent; deformation-mostly faulting-was spasmodic, but marine deposition did not end until Campanian time. This sedimentary-rock section has aroused considerable scientific interest, and the post-Devonian sequence may have a hydrocarbon potential that merits testing. These rocks extend as much as 150 mi (260 km) offshore, where the exploratory environment leaves much to be desired, but where the possible rewards in Permian and Triassic terrigenous clastic, carbonate, and evaporite sections ultimately may counterbalance the physical and geological risks.

Alaska-In the opposite, or northwestern, corner of the North American continent, the presence of at least one giant field" is assured (Fig. 3). The Prudhoe Bay field was discovered in 1968. The trap is an unconformity trap, and the major reserves (20 billion bbl [2.7 billion tons] of oil and 26 trillion cu ft [710 billion m"] of gas) are in Early Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, and Mississippian sandstones and carbonate rocks below transgressive Late Cretaceous units. The stratigraphic section is sufficiently well known and thus is not described here (Rickwood, 1970; Morgridge and Smith, 1972). The North Slope coastal plain offers good prospects for extended discoveries, but the future, like the present, is fraught with problems.

At present, environmental faddists arc: effectively blocking production and transportation. It is a safe prediction that, in the future, equally strenuous objections will be raised to development of the Naval Reserve west of Prudhoe Bay and of the Wild Life Preserve that lies east of the field and extends to the Yukon boundary. Apparently, the coexistence of the scant native population, the birds and beasts, and oilmen cannot be visualized by zealots who believe that their plan for protecting the environment should prevail, and to who m dependence on undependable petroleum supplies from remote and temperamental foreign sources appears preferable to economic development of Alaska and of a strategic coastline. Whatever the reserves of the North Slope-20 billion bbl (2.7 billion tons) at Prudhoe Bay alone, and probably more elsewhere-they are needed now, because foreign suppliers are tak-

• In this paper we use the term "giant field," adopting the definitions of Halbouty et al. (1970) for giant fields: 500 million bbl or larger (70 million tons) for oil; and 3.5 trillion eu ft (l00 billion m') for gas.

662


ing advantage of increasing demand and existing shortages.

Despite the promise of the North Slope, the area of the fold belt and adjoining continental shelf is limited by natural and political boundaries. However large, the hydrocarbon reserves are finite and will have a short life in meeting projected domestic requirements of the United States. The rest of onshore Alaska offers some, but severely restricted, possibilities for discoveries and production. More alluring, because of size and, perhaps, lack of definitive data, are the widening shelves on the west, shared with the USSR. The Chukchi shelf facing the Arctic and the Bering shelf fronting the North Pacific Ocean are connected by the shallow waters of Bering Strait. In combination they cover more than 300,000 sq mi (780,000 sq km). Geophysical studies, in part by the U.S. Geological Survey, have traced the Brooks Range structures and Colville geosyncline into the Chukchi Sea, where their trend suggests that they may extend to Wrangel Island or beyond, into the East Siberian Sea (Fig. 2). Whether petroleumbearing strata will be found in the structures is unknown. Preliminary studies by Scholl and Hopkins (1969) have outlined a large Tertiary sedimentary basin just south of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering shelf. Named the "Norton basin" from Norton Sound, it extends westward, passes north of St. Lawrence Island, and terminates against the Chukotsk Peninsula in Siberia (Figs. 1-3). Approximately 7,500- 8,000 ft (2,300-2,500 m) of sedimentary rocks is present above acoustic basement. Two basins have been identified south and west of the Pribilof Islands (Grantz et al., 1970). They may be similar to the Bristol Bay basin, where nine wells, drilled in an 18,000-ft (5,500-m) sedimentary section, penetrated Paleocene through Pliocene continental strata with only one show of oil (Figs. 1-3; Hatten, 1971).

To borrow (and corrupt) a line, we might summarize the hydrocarbon outlook for Arctic and subarctic North America by saying that,

. from Greenland's icy mountains to Alaska's frigid shores, the prospects of finding several giant fields are good. Anything below giant size is economically worthless until-and unless-it can be tied into an existing nearby transportation system. Hence it is likely that many small fields will go undeveloped, regardless of domestic or world demands. The modern and ancient shelves and the hinge lines where they merge with sedimentary basins or defunct geosyn-

clines, as well as the less severely deformedand generally younger-stratigraphic sections in the fold and fault mountain belts, present a recurrent series of hydrocarbon habitats from northern Greenland to the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea. The Mackenzie delta, which breaks the continuity of the Arctic mountain border, does not interrupt prospective hydrocarbon reservoirs. On the contrary, it adds one more type of favorable habitat. The immediate problem is the climate-primarily the socio-political climate and, secondarily, the weather.

Eurasia-A tour across Arctic Eurasia from west to east is a trip from the partly known into the unknown. Yet the fragmentary knowledge currently available reveals a hydrocarbon potential, partially proved, that may rival that of the Middle East. There are at least a dozen areas of interest between Spitsbergen and the Chukchi-Bering Sea, all but one of them under Soviet jurisdiction. The exception is Norway's Spitsbergen and adjacent waters.

Norway-Spitsbergen- The indiscriminate use of the word "sea" for water bodies, shallow or deep, with or without closure, is peculiar to Eurasian geography. In Western Europe, for example, the counterpart of Hudson Bay is the Baltic Sea. The shallow epeiric North Sea opens northward into the deep oceanic Norwegian Sea, which is separated from the North Atlantic Ocean by the Faeroe-Iceland Ridge or sill, from the contiguous oceanic Greenland Sea by Jan Mayen Ridge, and from the relatively shallow (less than 100 fm [180 m]) Barents Sea by the shallow shelf off southern Spitsbergen.

Because of their depth and the underlying oceanic crust fringed with narrow sedimentary slopes, the Norwegian and Greenland Seas offer few prospects for hydrocarbon discoveries, except (1) beneath the V ering Plateau west of Norway, where 30,000 ft (9,000 m) of Permian(?)-Quaternary section is present (Grenlie and Ramberg, 1970), and (2) between Jan Mayen Island and Greenland, where another thick section may be present (Figs. 1, 4).

The shallow North Sea, in contrast, appears to have recoverable reserves of 120 trillion cu ft (3.43 trillion m") of gas and more than 20 billion bbl (2.8 billion tons) of oil. The more recent discoveries (Forties field, etc.) have extended the known reserves into waters under Norwegian jurisdiction (Ekofisk and West Ekofisk field, etc.; Fig. 1). The Vering Plateau ap-

Arctic Geopolitics

663

pears to be a large basin contiguous with the North Sea sedimentary sequence off the Norwegian coast.

More promising, however, is the Barents Sea, the western 40,000 sq mi (100,000 sq km) of which belongs to Norway (Fig. 4). The western margin from the mainland through Bear Island is part of the Silurian Caledonides (Fig. 2; Czarniecki, 1969). The large area east of the fold belt extends to the Hercynian Ural-Novaya Zemlya orogenic belt, and the entire shelf sea is underlain by continental crust with an unexplored sedimentary overburden (Demenitskaya et al., 1968; Eldholm and Ewing, 1971). In Svalbard, which includes Spitsbergen and nearby islands in the northwestern Barents Sea, Caledonian folding was followed by Devonian block faulting and the deposition of "Old Red Sandstone" in grabens (Harland, 1969). Marine Devonian rocks eastward in the Pechora basin of northern European USSR suggest that the continental redbeds grade into a marine facies, possibly correlative with the marine Devonian of Novaya Zemlya (Vasil'yev, 1968b). In Svalbard, Early Carboniferous continental strata are overlain by Late Carboniferous and Permian marine beds, and the proportion of carbonate rocks increases in the Permian; the Late Triassic, Jurassic, and Early Cretaceous continental and marine strata have been identified on the island of Franz Josef Land, and a thin Late Cretaceous section is present in Svalbard (Dibner and Krylova, 1963; Escher, 1965; Klubov, 1965; Nalivkin, 1967; Sokolov and Pchelina, 1967; Sosipatrova, 1967; Kopik, 1968; Czarniecki, 1969; Harland, 1969). It is probable that rocks of these ages extend across much of the submerged basin (Eldholm and Ewing, 1971).

The structure beneath the Barents Sea is unknown, but the possibility of the existence of basins, faults, and even orogenic deformation to explain the Triassic conglomerates in Franz Josef Land is good in so large a shelf area, three quarters of which is shared by Russia. Obviously, conjecture can be set at rest only by a program of systematic geophysical exploration.

Russia-s-In addition to the Barents Sea, Arctic and subarctic Russia contains a dozen sed:mentary basins, not including parts of the Chukchi and Bering shelves shared with Alaska (Figs. 1,2,4). From west to east they are the Pechora basin, Kara Sea, West Siberian basin, Yenisey-Khatanga trough, Laptev Sea and

Lena delta, Lena Trough, Lena-Anabar trough, Irkutsk amphitheater, Vilyuy basin, East Siberian Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, and Anadyr' basin (Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1971). Platform basins may be present in an area as large as the Barents shelf, the margins of which were deformed orogenically, but most of which appears to have escaped deformation between the Caledonian fold belt on the west and the Hercynian Ural-to-Novaya Zemlya orogenic zone on the east. Post-Caledonian block faulting during Devonian time and a strong middle Eocene thrust from the Atlantic added structural complications in central and western Svalbard but left the broad platform unaffected. In the absence ef geophysical exploration, the detailed structure of the platform is unknown.

The Pechora basin (Fig. 4) is flanked on the east by the northern Urals and Pay-Khoy and on the southwest by the Timan Range. On the north and northeast it opens into the Pechora Sea reentrant of the Barents Sea. Although covered by a veneer of Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, it is a Paleozoic extension of the preUral foredeep. It contains 20,000 ft (6,000 m) or more of Silurian through Permian strata, which underwent structural deformation from tectonic movements in both the Timan Range and the Ural Mountains. Oil was found in the basin in 1929 and gas in 1935; subsequently, 43 structures have been proved to contain commercial oil and! or gas (Vasil'yev, 1968a, b). Among them are the giant Layavozh and Vuktyl' gas fields and the Usa oil field. All the Paleozoic systems from Silurian through Permian are productive. Known reserves are estimated at 10 billion bbl (1.4 billion tons) of oil and 45 trillion cu ft (1.3 trillion m") of gas; but the basin has a potential 10 times greater than these conservative figures.

From Novaya Zemlya to the islands of Severnaya Zemlya on the east, the Kara Sea covers a shallow platform with unknown possibilities (Fig. 4). Its western area appears to be an extension of the West Siberian basin. Its northeastern section is believed to contain 18,000- 20,000 ft (5,500-6,000 m) of Jurassic and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks, overlying a deformed Paleozoic and Precambrian basement. If this section has been correctly reported, it is correlative with the prolific sedimentary sequence in the West Siberian basin, but its hydrocarbon potential is untested and unknown.

The West Siberian basin, by way of contrast, is being explored and exploited actively (Fig. 4;

664


-01_ PiPE:'_TIf"

-- - f I<,-'JECTED OL PPELINE I Oil. >-l,EFINERY

i

-P,A..VLODAR. I

FIG. 6-Pipeline map of Siberia.

Vasil'yev, 1968a, b; Nesterov et al., 1971). Although production began only 10 years ago, more than 205 fields and potential fields have been identified in its 700,000-sq mi (1,750,000 sq km ) area-30 or more of them giants (Halbouty et al., 1970; Nesterov et al., 1971). Known and probable reserves of 79 billion bbl (11 billion tons) of oil and 787 trillion cu ft (22.5 trillion m-) of gas undoubtedly will be increased 3- or 4-fold as exploration continues. The productive section is a terrigenous sequence of terrestrial and marine Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks that filled a subsiding intraplatform basin. The sediments were deposited on a complex basement which was converted to horst and graben structures by post-Hercynian block faulting. These structures provided ideal sites for hydrocarbon accumulation in the 7,000- to 20,000-ft (2,100 to 6,000 m) Mesozoic succession, and a Late Cretaceous shale formed a seal. The entire region has been stable since Jurassic time, and its low elevation has prevented erosion that would have facilitated the escape of gas and oil. Transportation problems retarded the development of this immense province, and initially (1964) the oil was barged on the Ob' River. A 600mi (1,000 km) pipeline was completed to the refinery at

Omsk in 1967, and another tied the fields with Tomsk in 1969 (Fig. 6). The result was an increase in output from 1,400,000 bbl (192,000 tons) in 1964 to 14,000,000 bbl (1,920,000 tons) in 1969. This amount will be increased greatly during 1971-1975 with a planned increase to 730-876 million bbl (100-120 million tons) per year by 1975 (Dikenshteyn, 1971). The principal gas fields are north of the oil fields, and their development proceeded more slowly, but pipeline transport from some fields now is available to Sverdlovsk and other Ural industrial centers (Fig. 6; Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1971). The largest oil field in Russia is in the middle Ob' region-the Samotlor field (Figs. 7, 8), with recoverable reserves of 15.1 billion bbl (2.1 billion tons; Halbouty et al., 1970). The world's largest gas field is in the northern part of the basin near the Arctic coast -Urengoy field (Figs. 9,10), with proved plus probable gas reserves of 175 trillion cu ft (5.0 trillion m") and proved, probable, and potential reserves of 210 trillion cu ft (6 trillion m"; Remejew and Ostrowskaja, 1969; Nesterov et al., 1971). Condensate reserves are more than 5 billion bbl (684 million tons).

East of the West Siberian basin between the Taymyr fold mountains on the north and the

Arctic Geopolitics

665

Anabar shield on the south, the Yenisey-Khatanga trough (Figs. 1, 2, 4) contains up to 20,000 ft (6,000 m) of Jurassic and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks that have large gas accumulations. A small quantity of heavy oil has been tapped in underlying Triassic and Permian strata near Nordvik, at the northeast end of the trough (Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1971), where a Devonian salt-dome province is located (Kornev et al., 1966). North of the Taymyr range, the coastal area and shelf of the Laptev Sea, as well as the Lena delta farther east, are almost unexplored, although reconnaissance mapping and surveying, begun about 1969, increased steadily during 1970. Overall, there has been little exploration eastward along the Arctic Slope across the East Siberian Sea to the Chukchi Sea between Arctic Siberia and Alaska, but this situation will change markedly during the next few years. The breadth of the shelf and the onshore geology suggest hydrocarbon possibilities which probably will not be realized for some time to come.

Not much more is known of the Lena-Anabar trough and the Lena Trough (Figs. 1, 2, 4). but the ties of the former with the Khatanga trough and of the latter with the Vilyuy basin suggest petroleum possibilities that undoubtedly will receive attention in the future. In the Vil-

SAMOTLOR

FIG. 7-8amotlor oil field, West Siberian basin, USSR. Location of Figure 8 is shown. Field location is shown on Figure 4.

yuy intracratonic basin, centered at the confluence of the Lena and Vilyuy Rivers (Fig. 4), two giant gas fields and four smaller gas producers have been discovered in Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic sandstone (Vasil'yev, 1968b; Fradkin, 1969). Production comes from cupola-like structures on the crest of an east-west arch-130 mi (210 km) long, 35 mi (56 km) wide-with closure of nearly 5,000 ft (1,500 m). The productive domed structures range in

r IE L D

(F>o:OM I. NE5"'!"!C:flCV [T AL .. 1971 1

5S BOIL aOIL W,CAS

SH.

5l... T5T.

FIG. 8-West-east structural cross section of Samotlor field. Location is on Figure 7.

666


URENGOY

1 ..... · .. ·/1 GAS/WATER CONTACT }:

"

I:

j'

tt

I'OSI DRY HOLE: OBJECTIVE A\

~INOT REACHED 1'r

~JUNKED ~

~"

IAI CENOMANIAN (PK,l ~GAS WELL

~DRY HOLE

~NEOCOMIAN ~GASWELL

r

FROM NESTEROV ET AL.1I97J)

FIG. 9-Urengoy gas field, West Siberian basin, USSR. Location of Figure 10 is shown. Field location is shown on Figure 4.

length from 15 to 25 mi (24-40 km). Although most have been drilled, development awaits transportation and markets. Proved plus probable reserves are about 70 trillion cu ft (2 trillion m"}; ultimate reserves are estimated to be more than 200 trillion cu ft (6 trillion m") plus about 2 billion bbl of condensate (Fradkin, 1969) .

Beyond the Lena River in the Soviet Far East, exploration has been limited, but some oil and natural gas have been found in Proterozoic rocks in the intracratonic basins within the subarctic Irkutsk amphitheater-a platform bounded by the U-shaped Precambrian (Riphean) Baykalides orogenic belt (Fig. 4; Trofi-

muk et al., 1964; Vasil'yev, 1968a, b). Of greater significance, if only because of its location, is the recent (1969) discovery of gas in the Anadyr' basin on the west side of the Bering Sea (Dolzhanskiy et al., 1966; Burlin, 1967; Belyayev et al., 1970; Demenitskaya, 1971; Meyerhoff et al., 1971; Trofimuk, 1971). The basin is a small area of infolded Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary rocks. The gas is in a Miocene sandstone reservoir (Vostochno-Ozero). Unfortunately, this and a subsequent discovery are noncommercial. Nevertheless, production here and in Sakhalin no doubt will lead to more widespread exploration in the Maritime Region. Inland, however, Russia's Eastern or Pacific cordillera is not conducive to early settlement or intensive resource development. The geology, in any case, favors mineralization rather than hydrocarbon accumulation, except in local basins described by Avrov et al. (1969), Eremenko et al. (1970), and Trofimuk (1971).

ARCTIC OUTLOOK

A simple inspection of a map of the Arctic (Fig. 1) demonstrates Russia's primary interest in this polar sector of the earth. Its Arctic frontage far exceeds Canada'S, and the other national territories bordering the northern oceans offer no comparison. Areally, the region north of the Arctic Circle comprises a major part of the Soviet domain, and its development must be a project of prime importance. To a degree, Canada faces the same prospect and has even farther to go. If Canada's 21.4 million inhabitants were spread evenly over its territory, the density would be but 6 people per square mile, in contrast to 28 for Russia. From a purely occupational standpoint, Arctic Alaska, Greenland, and Spitsbergen are of no importance to the populations of their respective nations.

Accessibility offers a complex set of problems. Norway and Russia enjoy some advantages because the warm current from the Atlantic provides Spitsbergen and European Russia as far east as Murmansk with open water the year round. Water access to the rest of the Arctic coastal areas is seasonal and, even then, uncertain. Widely spaced rivers-only the Mackenzie in North America, and the Ob', Yenisey, and Lena in Siberia-offer usable waterways and valleys for inland access during short seasons. Vital as the airplane is, it cannot provide economic bulk transport for the mineral commodities most likely to lure local or regional settlement. Roads, railroads, and piplines pre-

Arctic Geopolitics

s A

30

55

.u,c

URENGOY FIELD

{FRO"A RC::MEYE',.' AND ')STR:)VSKAYA._ U69)

667

B ~

FIG. IO-South-north structural cross section of southern part of Urengoy field. Only Cenomanian reservoirs are shown; deeper Neocomian reservoirs not shown. Location is on Figure 9.

sent soluble but expensive engineering problems,

Nonetheless, as this summary has shown, the Russian, Canadian, and Alaskan Arctic-and possibly the Norwegian Arctic-contain resources which these countries and the rest of the world cannot do without. The mineral wealth still is imperfectly known, but the immediate need for Alaskan oil is obvious to all but the most rabid conservationists. There is less immediate pressure for Canadian hydrocarbons and metals, and only regional demands currently for Soviet oil and gas, although this situation in Russia is changing as plans for oil export proceed. Domestic requirements for certain metals found only in the Arctic have been more urgent in Russia, but neither domestic nor world demand for oil would justify the early development of her huge reserves north of the Arctic Circle. However, these reserves, which may rival those in the Persian Gulf, will give Russia control of a major source of world supply in the not-too-distant future. The reserves already proved are double the known reserves in the more thoroughly explored United States, and none of the broad shelf areas extending 6,000 mi (10,000 km) from the Barents Sea to the Chukchi Sea have been probed.

The immediate importance of Alaska's North Slope is evident, but it pales in comparison with the long-range significance of Russia's Arctic lands and shelves. Realization of the region's potential presents problems that are massive, if not insuperable. The terrain and the climate can be managed-at a price. Time no doubt will see the development of engineering competence which at present is not equal to the demands of the region. So far as we can see,

little intelligent, coordinated planning is being done to overcome the two most difficult problems-manpower and capital. Much of Russia's capital is being expended on nonproductive military hardware while she barters for foreign pipe and other types of sophisticated Western equipment. Low productivity in agriculture and industry, not to mention the loss of manpower to bureaucratic, political, and military establishments, place severe limits on the development of the North by a population that is thin by any standard in so large a country. The situation will endure as long as the Russians cherish their xenophobic regard for foreign men and money. Until the Russian outlook broadens -as it may now be doing (July, 1972) ,_ many of the assets of the Russian Arctic, like the ocean they border, will remain frozen or, at best, will undergo a "slow thaw." It will take many people and a huge investment for the Russians to radiate outward from the heartland to the marginal northland.

Whatever the problems that must be solved, the resources of the Arctic and subarctic north of 60° must be used. The region comprises 14 percent of the land surface of the earth, and it is a safe guess that the Arctic regions contain a larger percentage of the world's metallic and industrial wealth. Even in our ignorance we can hazard a "guesstimate" that 30-35 percent of the world's untapped hydrocarbon resources

'On July 19, 1972, Occidental Petroleum Co., a California-based company, signed an agreement with the USSR to supply to the Russians "a wide range of scientific and technical services" (Assoc. Press). Other foreign firms, particularly from Japan and the United States, were discussing additional possible contracts with the USSR.

668


are in Arctic and subarctic Russia, and the potential along Canada's Arctic fringe is unknown. Ironically, but perhaps causally, the North is in the political hands of underpopulated nations. Whether population pressures for lebensraum from the overpopulated countries will threaten the inhospitable north is problematic. China has not forgotten its territorial losses to Russia, and China's northwest still can accommodate more people.

If pressure comes, it is likely to be for access to the mineral wealth of the North. Russia senses this prospect and, as noted, is already seeking control of the main entry to the Arctic from the Atlantic. Her obsession for control of strategic waterways has sought military solutions, currently in naval strength. Military control is illusive, and will prove inimical to demographic and economic development. Even in an age of nuclear weapons, the North is indefensible, especially in an area as sprawling as Siberia or northern Canada. Effective utilization of these vast regions will require the manpower and monetary resources that can so easily be squandered on nonproductive policing. Development calls for international cooperation in a climate of peace.

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--- 1972b, Odds improve for Mackenzie Valley gas line: Oil and Gas Jour., v. 70, no. 9, p. 28.

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--- 1972e, Panarctic extends Drake Point 6 miles:


Arx, W. S. von, 1962, An introduction to physical oceanography: Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 422 p.

Avrov, V. A., et al., 1969, Karta perspektiv neftegazonosnosti SSSR (Map of oil-gas prospective areas of USSR): Ministerstvo Geologii SSSR, Ministerstvo Neftedobyvayushchey Promyshlennosti SSSR, and Ministerstvo Gazovoy Promyshlennosti SSSR, scale 1: 5,000,000, 4 sheets.

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Belyayev, I. V., et al., 1970, Glubinnoye stroyeniye Anadyrskogo neftegazonosnogo basseyna po geofizicheskim dannym (Deep structure of Anadyr' oil-gas basin, from geophysical data): Akad. Nauk SSSR Sibirskoye Otdeleniye, Geologiya i Geofizika, no. 5, p.I13-118.

Bourne, S. A., and A. E. PaUister, 1972, New industry, government data stimulates Arctic Islands interest:


Burlin, Yu. K., 1967, Vozmozhnye ploshchadi neftegazonakoplennya v Anadyrskoy vpadine na Chukotke (Possible oil- and gas-bearing features of Anadyr' basin of Chukotka): Moscow Univ, Vestnik, no. 1, p.51-58.

Chilton, J. R., E. D. Bietz, and C. A. S. Bulmer, Jr., 1972, Four discoveries highlight Arctic Islands exploration: World Oil, v. 174, no. 5, p. 53-56.

Cleland, N. A., 1972, The Canadian Arctic: costs, potential high: Oil and Gas Jour., v, 70, no. 12, p. 94, 97-98, 100-101.

Czarniecki, S., 1969, Sedimentary environment and stratigraphical position of the Treskelodden beds (Vestspitsbergen): Polska Akad. Nauk, Prace Muzeum Ziemi, nr. 16, p. 201-336.

Demenitskaya, R. M., ed., 1971, Geofizicheskiye metody razvedki v Arktike (sbornik statey) (Geophysical reconnaissances of Arctic: symposium), v. 6:

Leningrad, Ministerstva Geologii SSSR, Nauchno-Issled. Inst. Geologii Arktiki, 134 p.

--- et al., 1968, The transition zone between the Eurasian continent and the Arctic Ocean: Canadian Jour. Earth Sci., v. 5, no. 4, p. 1125-1129.

Dibner, V. D., and N. M. Krylova, 1963, Stratigraficheskoye polozheniye i veshchestvenny sostav uglenosnykh otlozheniy i ugol'nykh plastov na ostrovakh zemli Frantsa Iosiva (Stratigraphic position and material composition of carbonate rocks and coal deposits of Franz Josef Land): Sovetskaya Geologiya, no. 7, p. 77-89.

Dikenshteyn, G., 1971, Der gegenwlirtige Stand der Erdol- und Erdgas ressourcen in der UdSSR: Berlin, Zeitschr. filr angewandte Geologie, Band 17, Heft 4, p. 114-117.

Dolzhanskiy, B. G., et al., 1966, Novyye dannyye 0 glubinnom stroyenii tsentral'noy chasti Anadyrskoy vpadiny (New data on deep structure of central part of Anadyr' basin): Geologiya Nefti i Gaza, no. 10, p. 15-21.

Douglas, R. J. W., ed., 1970, Geology and economic minerals of Canada, ed. 5: Canada Geol. Survey Econ. Geology Rept. No.1, 2 vol., 838 p.

Einarsson, Tr., 1965, Remarks on crustal structure in Iceland: Royal Astron. Soc. Geophys. Jour., v. 10, no. 3, p. 283-288.

--- and A. A. Meyerhoff, 1974, Continental drift,

Arctic Geopolitics

VI: tectonic features of Iceland: Jour. Geology, v. 82, in press.

Eldolm, 0., and J. Ewing, 1971, Marine geophysical survey in the southwestern Barents Sea: Jour. Geophys. Research, v. 76, no. 17, p. 3832-3841.

Engineering and Mining Journal, 1969a, Canada's nationwide intensified exploration program pushes northward: v. 170, no. 4, p. 120.

--- 1969b, Canada's dynamic mining industry: v. 170, no. 9, p. 97-202.

Erernenko, N. A., et al., 1970, Karta perspektiv neftegazonosnosti shel'fa SSSR (Map of oil-gas prospective area of shelves of USSR): Akad. Nauk SSSR, Ministerstvo Geologii SSSR, Ministerstvo Neftyanoy Promyshlennosti SSSR, and Akad. Nauk Azerbaydzhan SSR, scale 1 :5,000,000, 3 sheets.

Escher, E. F., 1965, Geological sketch of Svalbard Islands (Spitsbergen): Geol. Mijnbouw, 44e jaarg., nr. 8, p. 285-294.

Fagerderg, B., and P. H. Fahlstrom, 1969, Crushing and grinding practice in Sweden: Mining Eng., v. 21, p. 61-65.

Fradkin, G. S., ed., 1969, Leno-Vilyuyskaya neftegazonosnaya provintsiya (Lena- Vilyuy oil and gas province): Moscow, "Nauka," 279 p.

Grantz, A., et al., 1970, Reconnaissance geology of the Chukchi Sea as determined by acoustic and magnetic profiling, in W. L. Adkison and M. M. Brosge, eds., Proceedings of the geological seminar on the North Slope of Alaska: Los Angeles, Pacific Sec. Am. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists, p. F1-F28.

Grenlie, G., and I. B. Ramberg, 1970, Gravity indications of deep sedimentary basins below the Norwegian continental shelf and the V ¢ring Plateau:

Norsk Geol. Tidsskr., v. 50, p. 375-391.

Halbouty, M. T., et al., 1970, World's giant oil and gas fields, geologic factors affecting their formation, and basin classification, in M. T. Halbouty, ed., Geology of giant petroleum fields: Am. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists Mem. 14, p. 502-555.

Haller, J., 1969, Tectonics and neotectonics in East Greenland-review bearing on the drift concept, in Marshall Kay, ed., North Atlantic-geology and continental drift: Am. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists Mem. 12, p. 852-858.

--- 1971, Tectonic map of east Greenland (1: 500,000). An account of tectonism, plutonism, and volcanism in east Greenland: Medd. om Grenland, Bind 171, nr. 5, 286 p.

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Heise, H., 1972, Arctic Islands gas reserve ballooning:


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669

Ivanov, A. A., and Yu. F. Levitskiy, 1960, Geologiya galogennykh otlozheniy (formatsiy) SSSR (Geology of salt formations of USSR): Vses. Nauchno-Issled. Geol. Inst. Trudy, n.s., t. 35, 424 p.

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--- --- and --- 1966, Magnetic data on the structure of the central Arctic region: Geol. Soc. America Bull., v. 77, no. 6, p. 619-646.

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Kolgina, L. P., et al., 1971, Litologiya porod-kollektorov mela Surgut-Ust'-Balykskogo neftenosnogo regiona Zapadnoy Sibiri (Lithology of Cretaceous reservoirs in Surgut-Ust'-Balyk oil-bearing region of West Siberia): Moscow, "Nauka," 168 p.

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Kornev, B. V., et al., 1966, 0 perspektivakh i osnovnykh napravleniyakh neftegazopoiskovykh rabot v Noril'skom rayone (Prospects and directions of trends in oil and gas exploration work in Norilsk area): Geologiya Nefti i Gaza, no. 1, p. 10-15.

Kulling, 0., and P, Geijer, 1960, The Caledonian mountain chain in the Tornetrask-Ofoten area, northern Scandinavia; The Kiruna iron ore field, Swedish Lapland: 21st Internat. Geol. Cong., Copenhagen 1960, Guides to Excursions A25, C20, 76 p.

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L'vov, M. S., 1969, Resursy prirodnogo gaza SSSR (Resources of natural gas in USSR): Moscow, "Nedra," 224 p.

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--- 1970b, Continental drift, II: high-latitude evaporite deposits and geologic history of Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans: Jour. Geology, v. 78, no. 4, p.406-444.

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--- I. A. Mamantov, and T. Shabad, 1971, Russian Arctic boasts big potential: Oil and Gas Jour., v. 69, no. 43, p. 122-126.

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670


giya i neftegazonosnost' arkticheskikh i subarkticheskikh rayonov mira (Geology and oil and gas accumulations in Arctic and subarctic areas of the world): Moscow, Ministerstvo Neftyanoy Promyshlennosti, Vses. Nauchno-Issled. Inst. Organizatsii, Upravleniya i Ekonomiki Neftegazovoy Promyshlennosti, 116 p.

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