A resource frontier

Question 1

The Arctic

Answer 1

Some areas of the Arctic contain rich resources of oil, natural gas and minerals (e.g. iron ore, gold).

Question 2

Many of these resources haven’t been exploited, for several reasons:

Answer 2

They are hard to access e.g. more than 80% of the Arctic’s gas and oil reserves are offshore.
There is little infrastructure (e.g. roads, pipelines) in the Arctic, which makes extraction and transportation of resources difficult.
The environment is challenging-sea ice can make transport difficult, while extreme cold and winter storms can put equipment and workers at risk.

Question 3

Some parts of the Arctic are being exploited

Answer 3

e.g. large oil reserves were discovered at Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska in 1968. In the 1970s, the Trans-Alaska pipeline was constructed to carry oil to southern Alaska, from where it could be transported to customers.