Global warming opening up Russia's Arctic

Space Daily via UPI: Russian state-owned energy firms are preparing to move into the country's offshore polar regions. On Jan. 15 Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich's told journalists that the state-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom energy companies are to receive licenses to develop the 12 and 17 arctic continental shelf sectors. The decision is raising concerns among the country's private energy companies that they will be locked out of developing the country's potentially vast arctic hydrocarbon reserves.

Russia's natural resources ministry proposed on Jan. 15 that offshore oil and gas fields on the country's Arctic shelf that isn't wanted by state-controlled firms should be explored and developed by non-state companies.

Private companies have so far failed to break the monopoly of Gazprom and Rosneft on hydrocarbons exploration on Russia's offshore continental maritime shelf, as currently only Russian state-controlled companies, including Rosneft and Gazprom, are allowed to hold offshore licenses in Russian territorial waters, Russkoe Informatsionnoe Agenstvo news agency reported on Tuesday.

Currently energy companies that want to acquire licenses to work on the Russian continental offshore shelf have to have a minimum of 50 percent state ownership and foreign and Russian private companies have to sign contracts with either Gazprom or Rosneft.

In further bad news for Russian private energy firms, Gazprom is not interested in relinquishing to state control the licenses for those offshore fields it is not interested in, according to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller, speaking to reporters in Novy Urengoi, above the Arctic Circle....

Three icebreakers, some of them Russian, shot by US Department of "Homeland Security," public domain

Global warming opening up Russia's Arctic

Space Daily via UPI: Russian state-owned energy firms are preparing to move into the country's offshore polar regions. On Jan. 15 Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich's told journalists that the state-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom energy companies are to receive licenses to develop the 12 and 17 arctic continental shelf sectors. The decision is raising concerns among the country's private energy companies that they will be locked out of developing the country's potentially vast arctic hydrocarbon reserves.

Russia's natural resources ministry proposed on Jan. 15 that offshore oil and gas fields on the country's Arctic shelf that isn't wanted by state-controlled firms should be explored and developed by non-state companies.

Private companies have so far failed to break the monopoly of Gazprom and Rosneft on hydrocarbons exploration on Russia's offshore continental maritime shelf, as currently only Russian state-controlled companies, including Rosneft and Gazprom, are allowed to hold offshore licenses in Russian territorial waters, Russkoe Informatsionnoe Agenstvo news agency reported on Tuesday.

Currently energy companies that want to acquire licenses to work on the Russian continental offshore shelf have to have a minimum of 50 percent state ownership and foreign and Russian private companies have to sign contracts with either Gazprom or Rosneft.

In further bad news for Russian private energy firms, Gazprom is not interested in relinquishing to state control the licenses for those offshore fields it is not interested in, according to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller, speaking to reporters in Novy Urengoi, above the Arctic Circle....

Why Russia's cold snap is so deadly

Mark Lallanilla in Live Science: If any nation on Earth is accustomed to dealing with a harsh winter, it would be Russia. But from the farthest reaches of Siberia to downtown Moscow, the Russian people are being pummeled by a winter so brutal it's shattering cold-weather records across the continent — and it's only December.

As temperatures plunge as low as –minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 50 degrees Celsius) in some areas, the Pravda news site reports that 45 people have died of causes related to the subfreezing weather; 21 people froze to death in just one day. Hundreds more have been hospitalized with frostbite and other conditions.

Subfreezing weather combined with heavy snowfall in some regions have crippled the nation's infrastructure, closing roads, scrambling airline flights and bursting pipes that carry water and heat into homes, schools and businesses, according to RT.com.

This winter is the coldest on record since 1938, reports RT.com. The freakish cold spell, which has already lasted five days, is expected to continue through the weekend....

Russian winter, near Moscow, shot by Aleks G, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Russia, Ukraine hit with massive snowfall

Terra Daily via AFP: Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday battled through heavy snowfall which created record traffic jams in Moscow and cut power in some 300 Ukrainian towns. Colossal amounts of snow fell overnight, making the morning commute into the Russian capital a nightmare, with stop-and-go traffic on most major streets to the center.

"Today Moscow was one step away from complete transportation paralysis," a presenter said on Channel One's afternoon news. A government plane with several ministers was delayed by the weather flying out of Moscow due to particularly heavy snowfall in Vnukovo airport, Russian agencies reported.

The airport said on its website that it was forced to close down its landing strip for fifteen minutes every hour in order to clean it and treat it with anti-freezing agents.

The emergency ministry in Tver region northwest of Moscow -- where thousands of trucks were stuck in a 190 kilometre-long jam over the weekend -- warned that snowfall is once again slowing down transport.

"There is increased risk of traffic jams and accidents due to snowfall," the ministry said on its website, warning of a decreased speed limit on the highway M10 that links Moscow and St. Petersburg....

First snow on a Ukrainian railway bridge in 2010, shot by Maksim Nakonechny, public domain