Working on an Antarctic Research Vessel, I live and work alongside a parade of subject matter experts. When I asked a certain geologist who has performed a good deal of research in the Ross Sea what is known about the potential mineral wealth of Antarctica, he listed a few locations where coal seams and oil seeps have been found. Then, sparked by my curiosity, he turned to the marked-up map of the seafloor that was rolled out on the chart table. With his finger resting on a waypoint not far from where the conversation was taking place (a location I won’t disclose here), He told me that this boat has pulled up core samples with “shows” of natural gas.

He paused, noting that I had taken up my pen and notebook. When I confessed I’m a blogger, my geological subject matter expert became abruptly less speculative and asked not to be named or quoted. I had observed the shift from someone openly excited about science to someone aware of the political ramifications of our conversation. The NBP is a research boat. Oil and academia, apparently, don’t mix.

Antarctica is presently protected by international treaty that excludes military presence and any economic development. Antarctica, the treaty says, is for the peaceful pursuit of science. To date, no one has initiated any effort to recover oil from anyplace below the Antarctic Circle.

But in the North, the land grab is already underway in the Arctic. With retreating polar ice making potential for navigation and mineral exploration, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Canada are all jockeying for their share of the post melt-down pot.

Most all of the countries which border the Southern Ocean maintain claims on Antarctica, despite being signatories to the treaty. (Google “Antarctic Territories” and you’ll see a map that looks like a sliced up pie, wedges radiating out form 90 south). Britain, Argentina and Chile all entertain slices that overlap (which ought to be interesting when one or more attempts to exercise those claims. Recall the Falklands?) McMurdo and the Ross Sea are in the heart New Zealand’s Ross Dependency. But even the Kiwis, like the Americans, are entirely dependent upon the US Air Force 109th Air Wing to support the stations. God Save the Queen.

The US officially recognizes no territorial claims in Antarctica, and has made no claims itself. Yet America deploys far more people to Antarctica than any other nation, and Americans outnumber the next five nationalities combined. The cynical examiner will point out that it’s hard to imagine our nation (a nation that balks at universal healthcare and funding for the arts) financing three logistical bases in Antarctica at an annual operating cost of $300 million just so a few dozen groups of scientists can take the planet’s temperature.

So my question to the geologist wasn’t entirely naive. The fisheries of Antarctica are already being tapped illegally. I’m curious how long the lofty restraint of the Antarctic treaty will last if significant quantities of oil were discovered.

My unnamed geologist summarized diplomatically by saying that he would be surprised if throughout this entire continent there were no oil or gas reserves. The trickier bit is the expense and difficulty of getting at them. I would be surprised if the oil industry hadn’t also figured out the same thing.

Oil exploration depends on the same techniques that this boat uses to decode the glacial history of the Ross Ice Shelf. Some of the people operating the big toys on this boat have also worked for the oil industry. The difference in resources is staggering. This boat costs the National Science Foundation around $30,000 a day to operate (On a personal level, if I accidentally lose some data, I can calculate exactly how expensive the goof was). Big oil companies have fleets of research boats that dwarf the NBP. For example, when we max out our seismic survey operation (see 3a Whale Watch, earlier this month), we are trailing two pneumatic guns and along side them, two streamers with an array of hydrophones. We will drag them around for a week straight, ice conditions permitting. In contrast, an oil company boat might have an array of ten guns in the water and the same number of hydrophones arrays in just one acoustic channel. A short cruise for them is measured in months. Our database is a suburban branch library to their library of congress.

We publish our results. Oil industry researchers do not.

You can also properly deduce that there are similar jobs for higher pay aboard those industrial boats. So why not work for industry? I think it has something to do with an attachment to this place, and at the risk of sounding cheeky, the ethos of science. Scientific inquiry is based on testable hypotheses which depends upon the free exchange of knowledge in the scientific community. Industry hoards knowledge because it could mean profit. For now anyway, even with the price of oil around $100 a barrel, the political and logistic difficulties evidently outweigh the profit motive. So we live in what seems to me to be a precarious stasis that has produced the golden age of science in Antarctica.

One veteran of the oil industry now working under the banner of science told me that she would just as soon not see Antarctica developed for oil. If we discovered promising signs of oil, she said, she wouldn’t hide the fact, but then she wouldn’t exactly run to her former employers with the news either. I have a feeling they will know just where to find all the people with the necessary experience when the time comes.