After a short wait at the very modern airport in Tromsø, Norway, and an even shorter wait at the check-in counter of the very modern hotel downtown, it hit me that the experience was a very different one from my last stay above the Arctic Circle.

It was roughly five years ago when my overstuffed duffel bag and I arrived in Barrow, Alaska. We made it off the tiny plane only after the Doritos and toilet paper shipment was offloaded and on its way to the local grocery store. Priorities being what they were, I was more than delighted to arrive hours later at the very rustic hotel located just a few blocks down the muddy road from the airport.

The experience of seeing the Arctic from the top of the world on two continents helped illustrate the polar opposites of the North Pole neighbors. Many think of the “Arctic” as a singular, all-encompassing expanse blanketed in white with polar bears and Eskimos or Santa Claus and his reindeer when it is in fact a region rich in biologic, economic and sociologic diversity.

There are two Arctics: one where time stood still while simultaneously marching forward in the other. Fortunately, the knowledge and technology gains made in one can help set the development blueprint for the other, especially in regards to the establishment of safer, more environmentally conscious E&P of Alaskan and Canadian oil and gas resources in the Arctic offshore.

Shell’s recent confirmation that it would move forward with its plans to drill in the Arctic waters off of Alaska was met with the usual objections from the usual suspects. There is no debate that their concerns are valid, and Shell’s cautious planning is an acknowledgment and validation of those concerns. There’ve been some bumps along the way, but that’s to be expected in an area that very little is known about. To know, one must explore to learn how to be better prepared for the future.

The western Arctic offshore industry will not be built in a day. The development of the Arctic offshore as a whole is more a “marathon” than it is a sprint, as Tim Dodson, Statoil’s executive vice president of exploration, said in his comments at the 2015 Arctic Frontiers conference held earlier this year in Tromsø. As noted in this month’s Arctic market outlook, the average time from discovery to startup for an Arctic project is more than 21 years.

Today’s efforts to develop the offshore of the western Arctic have—in addition to decades of knowledge and technology advancements made in Norway, Russia and elsewhere—more than 20+ years on the clock before initial production startup to research, identify, plan, prepare and build the infrastructure necessary to safely work in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. This 20-year head start will not be squandered by those daring few willing and capable of running the development marathon in the western Arctic. The risk is great, but the global energy demands of a population estimated to be close to 9 billion people in 2035 will be considerably greater.

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