Since I stumbled upon a snow field on my hike today, I figured we should take the next question in the ‘Ask Peter’ series: are we approaching a new era of exploration, exploitation and development in the Arctic?

While I can’t rule it out, the Arctic has a knack for keeping us at bay. The area is unpopulated, you have to build infrastructure for anything you want to do, and it just sucks to work in the tundra. Did I leave out the high development costs, high maintenance costs, and seasonal income?

Russia is one of the few places with any sort of population in the Arctic, but they lack the capital and know-how to do anything of note, let alone at critical mass. Places like Norway have ice-free seas, which has allowed them to get into offshore oil and natural gas deposits; however, there’s no real opportunity to expand this capacity.

Without a series of technological breakthroughs, I can’t imagine there will be much development in the Arctic. This is seemingly one of those things at the top of the world that will stay that way.