Russian news and information agency RIA Novosti hosted a Moscow-Washington video linkup The Arctic: Directions and Mechanisms of International Cooperation. The event coincided with the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Arctic Council and the run-up to the second international forum The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue to be held September 22-24.

Climate warming and the melting of ice are opening up new opportunities for access to the natural recourses of the Arctic region. Could the Bering Strait become an important navigable passage? How best to organize environmentally friendly hydrocarbon production? Experts discussed these and many other questions during the Moscow-Washington linkup.

Moscow participants:

 - Anton Vasiliev, Russian Foreign Ministry special envoy in the Arctic Council;

 - Boris Nikitin, President of Russia's Academy of Technological Sciences and chair of the Offshore Drilling Dept. at Gubkin Oil and Gas University;

 - Sergey Dobrolyubov, Deputy dan of the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University, correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Russian Geographic Society’s presidium.

Washington participants:

 - David Monsma, Eecutive director of the Aspen Institute's Energy and Environment Program;

 - Julie Gourley, Senior U.S. Arctic official, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State;

 - John Farrell, Executive director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.