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Russian-Algerian Energy Relations 2001-2014: Creating a Geopolitical Platform and The Politics of Developing the Russian Arctic (2008-2015): Energy, Shipping & Security

02 June 2016, 5:00 pm–7:30 pm

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Event Information

Location

Drayton B19, UCL

UCL SSEES Research students, Samir Amar Setti and Thomas Hedegard will present their research in this double bill presentation.

Samir Amar Setti will present on Russian Foreign Policy in the Maghreb through the lens of Critical Geopolitics with a specific focus on Russian-Algerian Energy relations 2001-2014.The primary objective of Russia’s policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is to restore the leverage it once had during Soviet times. In its quest to promote a multipolar international system, Russia has used its energy sector as a foreign policy tool in the MENA region. My thesis explores how this policy played out in the Maghreb region since Russia and Algeria signed a ’Comprehensive Strategic Partnership' agreement in 2001 (the first of its kind between Russia and an Arab nation), following Putin’s consequential visit to Algeria.

Tom Hedegard will speak on his research, which examines the domestic and international factors affecting Russia’s development of its Arctic space between 2008 and 2015. 

The time frame of the research opens with the publication of Russia’s first Arctic strategy document in 2008, which was also when the North Sea Route was reopened to regular maritime traffic. The research closes with the 2015 deadline for the completion of development work in the region as stated in the country’s second Arctic development strategy, which was published in 2013.

The thesis will investigate whether Russia’s first and second development strategies were completed successfully and, if not, what political as well as economic issues hindered development over this period.

The project is subdivided into three areas of investigation. The first is energy exploration and production in Russian Arctic territorial waters and onshore in its High North. The second is Arctic shipping, both along the Northern Sea Route as well as coastal traffic and through the inland waterways of Russia’s north. The third is the security environment in the Russian and wider Arctic region over the last seven years, including Russia and NATO’s new military postures in the circumpolar North and the overlapping applications to expand the continental shelves of littoral Arctic states.

The key issues under scrutiny in this thesis are Russia’s regional-federal interplay, infrastructure development studies, corruption, maritime and drilling operational risk, competing arctic sovereignty claims, military activity in the Arctic and the prevailing economic environment.

The research is unique in that it will present a holistic, multi-disciplinary picture of the myriad political and economic factors that shape the development of the Russian Arctic, which Moscow has repeatedly stated is a top national priority.