Antarctica A New Look

Antarctica is the coldest and most desolate of all the regions of the planet. It was the one place, everyone agreed, that all the nations could share. However, as our natural resources start to run out, more nations are now looking at Antarctica as an additional source of natural resources.

Now the Antarctica is being looked at as a region with potential oil, coal and iron reserves and not one of just ice, penguins and whales. The region may become the subject of international confrontation and resource exploitation and cease to be a region of international cooperative scientific research as it is today.

The scientists based in research centers in the Antarctic have praised the decades of international cooperation and sharing in bases such as the main U.S Antarctic facility. The cold, hostile environment is said to bring people closer and they cope with the challenges it brings together, and they all share a passion for the work they are doing.

The work of Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and his vision for the Antarctic has lead to a park being dedicated to him outside the National Science Foundation McMurdo building headquarters. Admiral Byrd led five expeditions in the Antarctica and was the first to fly over the South Pole.

Byrd envisioned the Antarctic as a place where nations could work together peacefully for the common cause of science and that it should be a region that set an example of successful international cooperation. The sentiments are noble, but can they survive in a world starved for energy and minerals?

There amount of interest in the region as a source of minerals is growing, but the full potential of the mineral deposits in the Antarctic is not yet known.

The Antarctic has changed from being a benefit to science to more of a political benefit. It is believed that below the thousands of feet of ice and deep below the hostile seas there are massive deposits of oil and minerals.

Considerable quantities of oil reserves and minerals have been found in continents that resemble Antarctica geologically. Small-scale scientific core drilling by the United States hints at possible hydrocarbon deposits offshore.


Large amounts of iron and coal have already been discovered and concentrations of uranium, tin, lead, gold, titanium, copper, cobalt, nickel and chromium have also been found on land.

Thanks to its challenging environment the Antarctic has always laid beyond the reach of exploitation due to the height of the challenge and the expense involved. The new technology available today has made exploitation of the region easier and because the prices of the minerals have risen considerably it has become more economical to exploit the region and this has brought concern to the scientists.

There is also worldwide concern amongst environmentalists because Antarctica is one of the few remaining unpolluted sanctuaries on the planet. Groups including the Sierra Club and the International Institute for Environment and Development in London can see the inevitable conflict between commercial and environmental interests.

Both believe that exploration of the mineral deposits is needed to see what is actually there but that there must be studies carried out to assess the environmental impacts. However they are worried the results of any studies will actually encourage development. Oil drilling causes a lot of concern because of the chances of oil spills.

A lot of the animal life present in the Antarctic, such as seals and birds, is located by the coast and may be heavily affected. Oil is known to not degrade or break up as easily in colder climates than in warmer ones, so a spill would be more damaging there than anywhere else.

Many of the activities that take place in the region are tied to a treaty created from 1959 that set Antarctica aside specifically as a scientific preserve. All of the twelve nations that originally signed the 1959 treaty, and also Poland who later joined, have allowed the Antarctic to remain free from nuclear weapon testing and nuclear waste.

All cases of territory claims that overlap have been side stepped by the 1959 treaty. Countries including Great Britain, Argentina, France, Australia, Norway, Chile and New Zealand all claim land within Antarctica.