The financial risks and vain attempts of the predecessors scare the oil companies off the Arctic research. This land has 13% of the world's reserves of black gold and 30% of natural gas, but the difficulties in these fields development cause postponement of work. The recent failed attempt resulted in an accident on the drillship belonging to Royal Dutch Shell. The company’s shareholders filed several claims to the Board management, because the project was invested by $4.5 bln, but finally, the Alaska shelf drilling was canceled. "The whole Arctic, especially the American Arctic, was set back because of Shell's issue," Choo Chiau Ben, the CEO of Keppel Corporation, the world's biggest rig maker, said in his interview to Reuters. The administration of other leading oil corporations do not want to repeat the mistakes, and they evaluated all the risks so carefully that decided to freeze their projects. Cairn Energy spent $1.2 bln on drilling in the area near Greenland, but did not find any supply of hydrocarbons. After that, Gasprom stopped the Shtokman field exploration in consequence of heavy expenses.
"We have been focusing on areas in the Arctic. Now we put our priorities into other areas, like Tanzania, Argentina, and Texas. That is the logical development," said Harald Norvik, a board member at ConocoPhillips and the former CEO of Statoil, a pioneer in the Arctic. "The reality is that going forward, the obvious demonstration of climate change in the Arctic will affect policymakers and boardrooms for years to come, and I see that more clearly now than five years ago or three years ago," Norvik added.
