Report: ‘Junior minister David Rutley last week told the EAC that his department had decided to trust Russian assurances it was just conducting scientific research.’ However, ‘reserves 10 times the North Sea’s output’ could be tempting – but not to most UK politicians, who prefer to import anyone else’s oil and gas in order to pose as climate friendly or something, while the government loses another court battle over its self-imposed net zero targets.
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Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK, reports The Telegraph.
The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.
Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.
It follows a series of surveys by the Alexander Karpinsky vessel, operated by Rosgeo – the Russian agency charged with finding mineral reserves for commercial exploitation.
Antarctica is meant to be protected by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that bans all mineral or oil developments. The UK’s interests are overseen by the Foreign Office – but it has been accused of ignoring the emerging crisis.
Junior minister David Rutley last week told the EAC that his department had decided to trust Russian assurances it was just conducting scientific research, adding: “Russia has recently reaffirmed its commitment to the key elements of the treaty.”
Experts on the region disagree, warning that placing any trust in Russia to stick to its obligations was naive – as shown by its invasion of Ukraine.
Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway College, an expert in Antarctica, who also gave evidence, said Russia’s activities were far closer to prospecting for oil and gas than to genuine science.
. . .
Most of the British Antarctic Territory is subject to competing claims from Argentina and Chile – which are bound to intensify if the evidence from Russia’s seismic surveys are proven by subsequent drilling.
The Foreign Office co-funds the British Antarctic Survey which has five research and logistical stations, and 250 staff, supported by the Royal Navy, and by the research ship RSS David Attenborough – all regarded as vital not just for science but also for maintaining the UK’s claims to the region.
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
“Russia has recently reaffirmed its commitment to the key elements of the treaty.”
Russia wasn’t going to attack Ukraine until it did 🤔
Well Old Brew, old Pal, I would trust anyone except an outfit with a ship called David Attenborough. Drill baby drill!
Not “reserves”, not even “resources”.
A look into the background of this story…
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-05-07-uk-ministers-face-a-grilling-as-russian-ship-heads-back-from-antarctic-prospecting-push/
t is less than three years since Nicola Sturgeon was taking selfies with Greta Thunberg at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. Now in this election the climate, if you’ll excuse the pun, has changed beyond all recognition. Gone is the moral posturing and climate alarmism of recent years as the Scottish parties desperately roll back on their climate rhetoric in the face of huge job losses in Scotland’s energy sector. Black is the new green.
Oil and gas companies are no longer climate pariahs.
It was of course Nicola Sturgeon back in 2021 who made Scotland the first country in the world to declare a ‘climate emergency’. We cannot continue to extract another drop of oil from the North Sea, she said, if we want to avoid global catastrophe. There’s not a moment to lose.
Lonely voices in the SNP pointed out that her party’s independence strategy was built on revenues from Scotland’s oil and had been for decades. No matter. Drilling in the Cambo oil field must be prevented, Sturgeon demanded, as she negotiated a climate coalition with the Scottish Green party whose slogan is ‘keep it in the ground’.
This blanket opposition to oil and gas made no sense since, even in what politicians call ‘the just transition to net zero’, fossil fuels are going to be needed for decades to come. Three quarters of the energy used by the UK comes from oil and gas – increasingly Liquified Natural Gas derived from fracking in America. Those of us who pointed out that if you stop extracting Scotland’s oil and gas you’ll end up having to import more of Putin’s oil or the Sultanate of Oman’s were called ‘climate change deniers’ – a weasel phrase that implies moral equivalence with Holocaust denial.
Well times change. This general election has drawn a line under the Greta Thunberg inspired climate fundamentalism, which affected all the political parties in various ways. Boris Johnson was almost as bullish on green energy as Nicola Sturgeon. He was responsible for unrealistic climate policies like banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030, which Rishi Sunak abandoned last year.
But no one has been going down the path of climate revisionism faster than the SNP since they turfed the Greens out of the coalition last month. The Scottish government had already abandoned Sturgeon’s reckless policy of cutting carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2030. Now, they not only want drilling to continue, they also oppose taxes on the fossil fuel companies they used to portray as planet-killers. No longer will there be a ‘presumption against oil and gas exploration’ in the Scottish government’s much-delayed energy transition plan expected sometime after the general election. Oil and gas companies are no longer climate pariahs.
Again, those of us who pointed out that it is these same energy companies who are expected to invest and engineer the transition to renewable energy were regarded as shills for capitalist ‘extinctionism’. But the chickens have now come home to roost. The Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce has announced that 100,000 jobs will go in the north-east of Scotland by 2030 if the current punitive tax regime on oil companies continues, along with the ban on exploration.
Labour are desperately backtracking on Sir Keir Starmer’s ban on future oil drilling. There are to be various concessions to encourage investment according to the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Tell that to the Unite union, which is warning about job losses. North Sea workers are ‘the coal miners of our generation’ says Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, condemning the Labour leader’s ban on new oil licences. Where are all the green jobs we were promised? They haven’t materialised.
Actually, as politicians in all parties have suddenly realised, many of the ‘green’ jobs are actually oil and gas jobs. Many of the same engineering skills used in erecting oil and gas platforms are required for constructing offshore wind farms. It is often the same energy companies, like Norway’s state-owned Equinor (formerly Statoil), building the wind farms that are drilling in Rosebank off Shetland. The canny Norwegians never bought the nonsense about keeping it in the ground.
This belated realisation that the oil and gas industry is essential to the transition to renewables has turned the energy equation upside down. Politicians are beginning to realise how irresponsible it was, not least for the sake of net zero, to parrot the slogans of Extinction Rebellion. Energy realism is back and oil is good again. Just don’t expect any apologies.
WRITTEN BY
Iain Macwhirter
‘Where are all the green jobs we were promised?’
In countries with lower energy costs like China, making items that are supposed to take the place of well-tried products like gas boilers, fuel-powered vehicles and thermal power stations. All in pursuit of hopelessly unrealistic and pointless net zero targets.
Voting for parties that back all this is asking for trouble IMO.