Bob Reiss -- Politics Daily

Published: 02/6/11

Under the Northern Lights -- How Norway Sets Example for Oil Drilling

HAMMERFEST, Norway -- The Northern Lights appeared in the night sky as the Dash 103 turboprop banked toward Hammerfest's snow-dusted airport last week. The glow didn't come from Aurora Borealis -- the famed celestial display -- but from flames venting from two stacks dominating a brightly lighted industrial complex below. It processes natural gas from the "Snow White" undersea reservoir more than 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Many Americans think of hot places like Iraq when envisioning oil or natural gas being pumped from the ground. Well, change that desert scene in your head to ...

Keep Reading »

Add Comment

Published: 12/19/10

Shell Oil's Gamble: Will It Be Able to Drill in the Beaufort Sea?

It's called a "controlled crash landing." The twin-engine Saab turboprop plane chartered by Shell Oil circled warily above the volcanic peaks of the Aleutian Islands Dutch Harbor last week. It dived through a tiny opening in the clouds and the wheels smacked down amid driving snow. Inside sat about two dozen Alaskan Eskimos and a handful of Shell oil executives. At stake on the trip may be America's next big oil find. Shell wants to drill at least one exploratory oil well north of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea in 2011. The company insists it can do it safely. Members of the Inupiat and Yupik ...

Keep Reading »

Add Comment

Published: 03/13/10

Cold, Hard Facts: U.S. Trails in Race for the Top of the World

Most Americans give little thought to our far north. We think of the Arctic as a single region, a cold place divorced from our everyday lives, a setting for documentaries from which we learn that polar bears are in danger as their icy habitat shrinks. But the U.S. also faces huge, new geopolitical consequences from the melt. A whole new area of Earth is suddenly open for international conflict, environmental destruction, and an economic bonanza. On March 1, Alaska's senators sat down at the Council for Foreign Relations with other experts on the region to figure out how to get the rest of ...

Keep Reading »