The courage of economic decisions and the modern development of the Russian Arctic

The article analyzes the phenomenon of the courage of economic decisions in the development of the Russian Arctic. Courage is understood as a feature of contractual behavior - the ability to radically change or propose new conditions for an economic contract, which leads to dramatic shifts in the territorial, technological and organizational structure of the development process. In the modern development of the Arctic, new factors that affect the boldness of economic decisions are considered. First of all, it is climate change that pushes the boundaries of what is possible for maritime logistics, for the arrangement and extraction of the Arctic’s natural resources from offshore platforms. The manifestations of courage as a result of “infection” from small venture companies for large corporations and as a forced result of a contractual inter-corporate conflict are also considered. For modern development, important factors that determine the boldness of decisions are logistics, platform technology, and the complete or partial abandonment of the use of icebreakers in favor of specialized ice-strengthened ships. An estimation was made of the courage of business decisions for 24 projects of modern exploration of the Arctic resources using the U-ETO algorithm: according to 12 indicators grouped in blocks of “uniqueness”, “environment”, “technology”, and “organization”. As a result of this assessment, it was concluded that the courage of economic decisions is not directly related to the capital intensity of investment projects: relatively modest mining projects of new development can exceed super-capital intensive investment megaprojects for the development of hydrocarbons (e.g., Bovanenkovo or Vankor) if they rely on innovative technologies, organizational scheme and marine environment for its logistics, production, and processing. A major contradiction in the modern development of the Russian Arctic is the contrast between the uniqueness of the natural assets of the field and the traditional methods of its arrangement and development.