Northerners eyeing new riches

Oil, gas, gold, uranium. Immense wealth is there for the taking


“I know it sounds strange because melting sea ice could drive the polar bears away from here,” Mike Spence, the longtime mayor of Churchill, told me when we had dinner later that evening. “But a lot of people also think that’s going to happen anyway. So they see a year-round port as the salvation that they’ve been looking for.”

The residents of Churchill aren’t the only northerners eager to exploit the commercial opportunities that climate change promises. In the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, many in the business community are hoping to begin tapping the trillions of dollars in resources that have so far gone unexploited because there has been no economical way of getting them out.

“Nunavut has at least 10 per cent of Canada’s total oil reserves and more than 20 per cent of its natural gas reserves,” says Paul Okalik, the premier of Nunavut. “The Geological Survey of Canada estimates that the reserves in the Sverdrup Basin alone are worth over a trillion dollars. That’s trillion with a T.

“Up until now, the challenge was to get it to market. But now innovative technologies and perhaps even climate change are making these and other resources more accessible.”

The Star