The Russians have made a major but worrying discovery in Antarctica according to Newsweek and the Telegraph. During research on the “White Continent”, scientists reportedly detected an underground cavity filled with gas and oil. This reserve would be immense.
According to estimates by Russian scientists, we are talking about a reserve of 511 billion barrels detected in the “British part” of Antarctica. As the Anglo-Saxon media explained, this would be the equivalent of 10 times the production in the North Sea over the past 50 years. Or almost double the reserves of Saudi Arabia, the sector giant. But it must be remembered that since 1959 and the signing in Washington of the Antarctic Treaty, it has been a common good of humanity: a land reserved for scientific research.
“Prospecting rather than research”
This discovery has not been confirmed but it dates back to 2020, according to our British colleagues. She went under the radar but after 4 years and with the war in Ukraine started, she is worrying. And in particular British parliamentarians. “There is concern that Russia is collecting seismic data that could be interpreted for prospecting rather than research,” Klaus Dodds, Antarctic expert and professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway College, told the panel. . This Russian research could, according to him, constitute “a conscious decision to weaken the standards linked to seismic research in Antarctica, and ultimately a first step towards future exploitation operations”.
Russia claims that only science interests it in this research. But the international community cannot ignore the dangers that the exploitation of such a quantity of energy can represent in a context of war in Ukraine but also of an ecological crisis.
