Riches lie below the waters of Russia’s Arctic

RUSSIA’S LARGESTNSRNSR component republic is Yakutia. It extends well into the Arctic Circle and is as big as Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Romania combined, but with a population of just 1m people. Over the past decade retreating sea ice has opened up a new shipping lane along its coast, the Northern Sea Route (). This is the shortest passage between the ports of east Asia and western Europe, but its icy waters also offer something even more precious: geological bounty, in the form of cobalt, tin and rare-earth metals, deep below the surface.Hostile weather and other obstacles to extraction make prospecting along the a daunting venture. Nonetheless, numerous arms of the Russian state as well as private investors have already set their sights on these underwater minerals, in addition to the area’s oil and gas. Discoveries of deposits on land give hope of further bounty offshore. Nodules—tiny balls of oxides scattered across the ocean floor, and first identified off the coast of Siberia—hold special promise. They contain minerals that can be used in everything from electronics to rechargeable batteries.