After the Alaska meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, not much has been said about the cooperation in the region, except a few hints in the public media.
We have kept track of the most recent news to see how Arctic businesses and experts have reacted to the Anchorage-based talks and to look into some new notions and possible preparations for future cooperation.
Energy Projects
It is no secret that the primary economic incentives for cooperation in the Arctic are the region’s energy projects. Here, two hints have emerged recently.
First of all, according to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, Exxon had “secret talks” with Rosneft. Available sources point primarily to the discussions of the Sakhalin-1 project, where Exxon held a major investment. Yet we should not forget about the plans that the company had prior to the 2018 sanctions against Russia: to work on joint projects in the Kara, Chukchi, and Laptevykh Seas.
In 2014, Rosneft and Exxon opened a joint project in the Kara Sea called Pobeda (Victory). By some estimates, the reserves of this deposit are 130 million tonnes of oil and 499.2 billion cubic metres of natural gas.
Another possible point for energy cooperation is liquefied natural gas (LNG). President Putin said that the States and Russia are discussing this as a prospect for cooperation and mentioned Novatek:
“Huge world reserves of mineral resources have been discovered in the Arctic zone, and we have begun working, including Novatek, which is working with natural gas, and this work is being carried out in cooperation with many competitors.”
“By the way, with leaders, we are discussing the possibility of working together in this area,” said Putin. “And not only in our Arctic zone, but also in Alaska. And at the same time, no one else has the technologies that we have today, except us”.
The technologies in question are primarily Russia’s nuclear icebreakers.
LNG as an area of cooperation is all the more interesting as U.S. investors are still considering a potentially large Alaska LNG project.
A Change In Description
A curious notion is the reappearance of the term Transarctic Route to describe the Northern Sea Route. One might be surprised, but since 2022 this exact wording had not appeared that often until this summer.
Despite the fact that the NSR has often been discussed in the context of an international route (i.e., one connecting Russia and Asia), it has not been portrayed as ‘Transarctic’.
Now, the term seems to be gaining traction—after the discussions between the presidents, Russian news outlets and experts have begun to use this word.
Previously, one such trend in Russian Arctic discourse was the so-called Big NSR, intended to span from the Baltics to the Far East, expanding the western border and, thus, the beginning of the Route to Kaliningrad or Saint Petersburg. Here, we notice that expectations for the NSR might grow significantly if the American card is played right.
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