Areas with 50% or greater chance of large undiscovered oil and gas reserves

Areas under contention or not yet part of any country’s territory

Established boundaries of Arctic territorial waters

Current oil and gas fields near the Arctic region

Shell plans to explore in two areas north of Alaska.

Bering Sea

Pacific Ocean

The U.S. and Canada dispute ownership of this area.

U.S.

Chukchi Sea

Minimum extent of sea ice in 2013

Churchill

Countries must prove that their continental shelves extend more than 230 miles into the ocean to claim this area.

Hudson Bay

Canada

North Pole

Baffin Bay

Laptev Sea

Tiksi

Denmark

Russia

New York

Arctic Ocean

Nuuk

Norway

Longyearbyen

Kara Sea

Norway

Barents Sea

Iceland

Atlantic Ocean

Norwegian Sea

Pechora Sea

This region currently supplies almost two-thirds of Russia’s oil and gas.

Murmansk

North Sea

Russia arrested Greenpeace activists who attempted to board Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya platform here.