Russia's power push into Antarctica for fossil fuels

Supergiant oilfields are simmering below the Southern Ocean, the warming waters at the bottom of the Earth that wrap around the melting, icy Antarctic, a litany of Kremlin sources suggest.

By Tiara Walters

18 May 2022

Source: Moored near the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town in mid-March, the Akademik Tryoshnikov was one among several Russian polar vessels that visited Cape Town, an established port for the Russian Antarctic fleet, in the summer of 2021/22. (Photo: Xabiso Mkhabela)

Despite the 1998 Antarctic mining ban — ratified by Russia and 28 other states — some of the so-called loot in the Kremlin’s crosshairs appears cached within large marine sedimentary basins off East Antarctica’s Indian Ocean sector.

That supposed loot may equal a climate-busting 500 billion barrels of hydrocarbon “resources” — the building blocks for oil and gas — claims a bombshell statement released by the Kremlin’s mineral explorer, Rosgeo.

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