West Greenland News

In 2018, Havyard Design & Solutions won a contract for the delivery of two ship designs to Royal Arctic Line A/S. Reefer vessel design was a new segment for Havyard and the first of the two ships, ‘Siuana Arctica’, has now been delivered from the Astilleros Zamakona yard in Spain.Royal Arctic Line A/S handles all sea freight to and from the 13 biggest ports in Greenland, which secures supplies across the country. ‘Siuana Arctica' is set to sail the Uummannaq area to the Upernavik district in north-west Greenland.In the course of December…

Nature’s clock is running fast in the Arctic, thanks to climate change. Some plants in the low Arctic of Greenland are emerging sooner than usual. Due to diminishing sea ice cover, spring is coming sooner to some plant species in the low Arctic of Greenland, while other species are delaying their emergence amid warming winters, says a study. "The timing of seasonal events, such as first spring growth, flower bud formation and blooming, make up a plant’s phenology — the window of time it has to grow, produce offspring and express its life history. Think of it as “nature’s clock.” - says a study published in the journal Biology Letters and led by the University of California, Davis.

Developing the capability to discriminate between ships and icebergs in northern latitudes is a common interest shared by Canada’s Department of National Defense (DND) and the oil and gas industry. For DND, the focus is on ship detection for maritime security, whereas oil and gas companies are interested in detecting icebergs to ensure primarily the safety and also the productivity of offshore exploration and production operations. The Polar Epsilon and Polar Epsilon-2 applied…

For as long as men have traveled and traded by water-routes, ice has been a nemesis for ships and their hulls. And with good reason since, on average, sea ice covers about 25 million square kilometers (9,652,553 square miles) of the planet—amounting to about two-and-a-half times the area of Canada. To wage ice battle, even in the earliest days of polar exploration, sailors used strengthened ships to ply icy waters. Naturally, these ships were originally wooden and based on existing designs but reinforced…

According to a Nov. 29 report from The Wall Street Journal, Maersk Oil has been awarded a license covering Block 9 in Baffin Bay, offshore West Greenland. The frontier exploration block is 11,802 sq km. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Several of the world's largest oil companies hope to tap into possible offshore oil and gas reserves as Greenland opened a new round of concessions for exploration licenses in the fragile Arctic region. Eyes of an oil-thirsty world have turned to the shores of the semiautonomous Danish territory amid rising fuel prices, Mideast instability and concerns over future supplies. The Greenland government hopes to make big gains from any reserves found in its icy waters, but environmentalists say oil exploration there could damage a sensitive region already under threat by global warming. The names of companies attending the meeting and what…