Arctic: Soviet-type Gigantomania or Breakthrough Project?

The Arctic, before our very eyes, is gaining features of not even just a major project, but something approaching a national idea.

The nation is rapidly returning to Soviet-scale development of the Arctic. It is time we spoke about a real “Arctic mania.” It very logically fits into the economic policy of the government whose reliance on major industrial projects is increasingly obvious. Therefore the Arctic becomes almost central on the list of the executive’s industrial priorities. And the principle supposed to be behind it is “at all costs.”

A special role in this story is reserved for liquefied natural gas and crude oil. Otherwise the 80 million tonnes of annual freight transport along the Northern Sea Route stated as a goal in Putin’s inauguration decree simply cannot be achieved by 2024.

Special importance is attached to LNG – because its production must ensure a cumulative effect creating demand for shipbuilding, steel products, and power engineering.

The state is the key investor in the Arctic project.

Stakeholders constantly generate more and more proposals and ideas trying to profit from the Arctic fashion. There is a huge crowd of interested parties round the Arctic pie: powerful bureaucrats, companies from oil and gas, nuclear power, transport.

The internal fight for the Arctic or, more precisely, for Arctic appropriations, becomes more and more furious and curious.

In the new report you will find the following subjects:

• A map of Arctic stakeholders

  • Who are they, the main bureaucratic and corporate players in the Russian Arctic?
  • Key interests of corporations and bureaucratic clans in the Arctic, the strategies they pursue

• The system of government control of the Arctic

  • It has undergone serious change lately. A new government ministry in charge of the Arctic has appeared: the Far East Development Ministry has become the Far East and Arctic Development Ministry and a new Senior Deputy Minister for the Arctic has been appointed.
  • The limits of Arctic powers of other ministries and agencies have changed. We will show who is responsible for what segments of state policy on the Arctic and where key conflicts focus.

• State programmes to develop the region

  • How the interests of competing groups are “built into” government documents

• Oil and gas plans and the problem of transport of resources

  • What main production projects will be carried out and what their transport logistics are.
  • The fight for Arctic navigation and control of the Northern Sea Route.

Contents of the report: