The Arctic is home to a plethora of resources; it currently produces one tenth of the world’s oil and one fourth of its natural gas. Commercial extraction of oil started in the 1920s in Canada’s northwest territories. In the 1960s, large hydrocarbon fields were found in Russia, Alaska, and the Mackenzie Delta in Canada. The last several decades have produced billions of cubic meters of gas and oil in these countries in addition to Norway. The Canadian Arctic holds 49 gas and oil fields in the Mackenzie River Delta and 15 are located on the Canadian Arctic archipelago. There are also 11 offshore fossil fuel fields that were discovered in Barents Sea between Russia and Norway. North of the Arctic Circle, mostly in western Siberia, more than 400 onshore oil and gas fields have been found; roughly 60 of these fields are notably vast while a quarter of them are currently inoperable.

In addition to fuel sources, there are also extensive deposits of minerals in the Arctic, predominantly in the most developed part of the region, the Russian Arctic. It contains copper, silver, zinc, molybdenum, gold, uranium, tungsten, tin, platinum, palladium, apatite, cobalt, titanium, rare metals, ceramic raw materials, mica, precious stones, and some of the largest known deposits of coal, gypsum, and diamonds. The North American Arctic, on the other hand, holds iron, nickel, copper, and uranium. It is important to note, however, that many of the known mineral reserves have not been extracted due to the high cost and their inaccessibility.

"Natural Resources / Arctic." / Arctic. February 21, 2017. Accessed March 08, 2017. http://arctic.ru/resources/.