White House Releases Plan to Make Arctic Shipping Safer

By Timothy Gardner and Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – As Arctic ice melts away, opening the way for greater oil development and mining, the White House outlined a plan on Thursday to promote safety and security in the region by building ports, improving forecasts of sea ice, and developing shipping rules.

With warmer temperatures leaving Arctic sea passages open for longer periods of the year, billions of barrels of oil could be tapped beyond what is already being produced in the region. A loss of seasonal ice could also allow greater exploitation of precious minerals considered abundant in the Arctic.

Extreme weather conditions, however, make the region a challenge to navigate and develop.

The White House plan was released on the same day that Royal Dutch Shell canceled drilling this year off Alaska, after a series of costly mishaps in the harsh conditions, as part of efforts to cut spending.

The U.S. Defense Department will lead an interagency effort to forecast icy conditions by launching a satellite and improving analytic methods to forecast icy conditions.

The Department of Commerce, meanwhile, will lead coordination on surveying and charting of U.S. Arctic waters to ease shipping and improve adaptation to climate change in coastal communities.

“Our highest priority is to protect the American people, our sovereign territory and rights and the natural resources and other interests of the United States,” said the plan, which is part of President Barack Obama’s National Strategy for the Arctic Region he announced last May. The plan can be seen at:

In addition, the State Department will attempt to reach an agreement with Canada on the Beaufort Sea maritime boundary, and the Department of Homeland Security will lead work on developing an international code for ships operating in polar waters.

The U.S. military had been working on strategy in the Arctic before the plan was announced on Thursday.

The U.S. Navy is nearing completion of a new Arctic “road map” that lays out its approach to future engagements in the region, given increasingly open waterways. The updated document is based on the Navy’s first comprehensive assessment of the near-term, mid-term and long-term availability of sea passages, due to the loss of seasonal ice.

In a recent blog written for the Navy’s website, Navy Oceanographer Rear Admiral Jon White said an inter-agency team made the assessment after a comprehensive review of current Arctic sea-ice projections.

He said current trends were expected to continue in the near-term, with the Bering Strait expected to see open conditions about 160 days a year by 2020. The mid-term period would see increasing levels of ice melt, White said.

In the long-term, beyond 2030, environmental conditions are expected to leave waterways open for longer periods, driving a significant increase in traffic in the summer months.

Earlier this month, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert told a conference that Arctic ice was melting faster than predicted four years ago when the Navy published its first road map.

“We need to understand, we need to take a look at it and decide what does it mean to us for security, maritime security, freedom of navigation, and global force management,” Greenert told a conference hosted by the Surface Navy Association.