According to the ministry, there are huge hydrocarbon reserves hidden under the shallow seas in the area. Only the license area of Khastakh-more in the Laptev Sea might hold about 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 500,000 tons of condensate, the government body informs. Similarly big resources are located in licenses like the Prigydansky area in the Kara Sea, as well as in parts of the Barents Sea.The new legislation is adopted as the level of Arctic ice reaches historical lows. According to ice data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the month of November 2019 had the second lowest Arctic sea ice extent for the month in the 41-year satellite record. Climate change is increasingly making previously inaccessible areas in the Russian North available for industrial activity. Shrinking ice A new climate report from the Russian meteorological institute states that the polar parts of […]