Several Officials from Washington and around the world are travelling to Alaska to have a talk about Arctic. The United States also falls in the list of eight countries that can call themselves an Arctic nation.

Alaska will be flooded with several hundreds of dignitaries next week as President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and countless other high-ranking officials from throughout the world will gather to talk about the Arctic.

Although, the United Sates also falls in the list of countries calling them Arctic nations, it falls far behind in the development, infrastructure and investment, especially when compared to our neighbors Canada and Russia.

So far US do not have Arctic port, which not only limits development but emergency response as well. While the initial research is being done on a port in Nome, it is decades and hundreds of millions of dollars away from completion, and even then, large icebreakers or shipping vessels traversing the Northern Sea route would not be able to dock there.

According to a report, Russia is also constructing 10 Arctic search-and-rescue stations, 16 deepwater ports, 13 airfields and 10 air-defense radar stations.

When talking about icebreakers that can respond to marine incidents in the Arctic as well as assist with scientific research, the United States has two and one. It is the only polar class icebreaker and is nearly 20 years old and was all but mothballed before it pulled back into service a few years ago.

Russia on the other hand has dozens of these icebreakers. Canada recently allocated $3 billion to beef up its fleet.

Talking about the standards protecting including protecting the Arctic marine environment from sloppy, dangerous development in the realm of offshore drilling is concerned, the US standards have allowed one of the oldest drill rigs in operation in the world, the Noble Discoverer.