Demographics of Antarctica
Antarctica has few permanent residents, and contains research stations and field camps that are staffed seasonally or year-round, and former whaling settlements. The largest station, McMurdo Station, has a summer population of about 1,000 people and a winter population of about 200. Approximately 29 nations, all signatory to the Antarctic Treaty, send personnel to perform seasonal (summer) or year-round research on the continent and in its surrounding oceans.
Arctic resources race
The first offshore oil platform in the Arctic was Prirazlomnaya in the Pechora Sea off Russia, operated by the Russian company Gazprom; it began production in late 2013. Russia jailed 30 Greenpeace activists protesting the platform and seized their ship. The largest Arctic platform in the Arctic is Goliat in the Barents Sea off Norway, co-owned by Eni Norge AS and Statoil; it began production in 2015. Royal Dutch Shell had $7 billion project to extract oil from the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, "Polar Pioneer", but abandoned the project in 2015 after determining that it was "not sufficient to warrant further exploration". Contributing to these decision was the record-low price of oil and the high operating costs of operating in a remote region with extreme weather.