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12 November 2016

The Russo-Chinese energy, industrial and business partnerships in the Arctic

In effect, over the last few years, China has started becoming an important Arctic actor, through its membership as permanent observer at the Arctic Council as a “near-Arctic nation”. China is signing bilateral agreements with all the members of the Arctic council and is particularly interested by the energy and trade potential of the Russian Arctic (Valantin, “Arctic China (2) – The Chinese shaping of the North“, 9 June 2014”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 9 June 2014). China is projecting its gigantic influence in the Arctic, through scientific expedition, cargo convoys, trade and science partnerships, as well as financial investments, and has built its first own nuclear icebreaker, the Snow Dragon.

An illustration of this strong dynamic is the fact that, during the summer 2016, the Chinese streamer seismic vessel Hysy 720 has completed an undersea seismic mapping operation, after having been chosen for this task by the Russian giant oil company Rosneft. This operation maps in 3-D images the underground formations through the use of sound waves, in order to identify their geological content, and thus their oil and gas potential. The marine underground is divided into blocks, which are then bought by the energy companies that wish to explore and exploit them. The Chinese ship Hysy 720 is the first grand deepwater seismic vessel not only built in China, but also owned by Chinese oilfield Services Ltd. Rosneft decided to hire this company in April 2016 in order to accomplish the mapping operation of two blocks during the summer 2016, before the return of the winter night and cold. (Atle Staalesen, “Russians Choose Chinese Explorers for Arctic Oil”, The Independent Observer, April 27, 2016). In order to prepare its campaign, the Chinese ship docked in Kirkenes, i.e. the northernmost Norwegian harbour city, and signed a docking agreement with the local Henriksen shipping company.

We should note that the mapping of the second block was done in partnership and close cooperation with the Norwegian Statoil Company for the Norwegian side of the Barents Sea (Atle Staalesen, “First Arctic Summer for Chinese Oil men“, The Independent Observer, September 05, 2016). This shows, as other binational partnerships, the good Arctic relations between Norway, Russia and their companies, regarding the combination of energy development with changes in the Arctic environment.

The Arctic Russian-Chinese partnership of the summer 2016 is just one among many others energy partnerships between Russia and China, as, shows the example of the Yamal LNG plant where the Chinese invested a massive 12 billion dollars along Russian banks which input another 12 billion dollars (Valantin, “Russian Arctic Oil”, ibid). These partnerships reveal how the energy, shipping, industrial, business and strategic interests of Russia and China are converging in the Arctic.

These operations are only one example of the way Russia, in the current Anthropocene Era, is developing its Arctic region, changed by anthropogenic global warming, while developing partnerships with China as well as Norway and many other countries. As we observed previously, China’s business operators are gearing towards the Arctic, (See “Jean-Michel Valantin, “Arctic China (1)- The Dragon and the Vikings and Arctic China (2) ibid ”), while Russia is becoming a critical actor in a time when climate change is deeply altering the trade, energy and strategic status balance of the whole Arctic region (Marc Lanteigne, “Policy Brief-One of the Three Roads: The Role of the Northern Sea Road in the Evolving Sino-Russian Strategic Relations”, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2/ 2015).

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