Why Russia Is Way Ahead in Race to Control the Arctic

Updated | In October 2014, the Yamal, a Russian nuclear icebreaker with enormous shark teeth painted on its bow, rammed through the thick ice at the North Pole as a research vessel followed behind it, firing its seismic guns. Its multiyear mission: find oil and natural gas and help claim the Arctic sea bottom in Moscow’s name. In January, as Russian scientists were finalizing the test results, one of the mission’s leaders was elated as he stood before a rapt audience in Tromsø, a stunningly beautiful Arctic city in Norway. “We assure you, there is oil there,” said Gennady Ivanov of Russia’s Marine Arctic Geological Expedition. “And the oil is recoverable,” he noted later, in response to a question.

U.S. and European oil companies have long fantasized about tapping the Arctic’s abundant reserves; the U.S. Geological Survey estimates they make up to 13 percent of