A Brave New Russian Plan for Arctic Oil

I just read an excerpt from Bob Reiss' new book, The Eskimo and the Oil Man. This part features a idea from a Russian ( a real one ) that knows how to get things done....and his plan to avoid all the nastiness of drilling for oil in the high Arctic.

Here is my preamble, before I take you to the excerpt....

How do you do that?
How do you work in the Arctic and avoid the ice, snow and the winter deep freeze.?
Simple, he says.
You work under it.
Underwater.
Drilling operations would be fully submerged, under the ice.
Instead of large tanker ships, risking the ice and weather, huge, yet to be built tanker submarines, would hook up to underwater pumping stations to take on the load of black gold.

The excerpt from Bob Reiss' book...

 The question was how.
From a national security standpoint, the Russian said, when it comes to the problem of terrorists of the future attacking oil infrastructure, or of fighting in the Mideast interrupting international oil supply, "Arctic is more safe than Persian Gulf, yes?
"But in Arctic we have problems, icebergs. If we stop operations in times of icebergs it is not very good, yes? Another problem is oil spill in ice. Recovery? Practically zero," he said. But he did not look worried.
On the contrary, he was smiling. He had an answer! His eyes lit up and his blunt fingers stumbled over the keyboard, stopped, lifted a pen, sketched.
"We need special technology for Arctic, yes?"
Astounded, I realized he was drawing an underwater nuclear powered tanker, a kind of huge submarine that, he said, would travel beneath the ice, arrive at a sea bottom wellhead, attach itself to piping—as in the sketch—and suck up oil or gas.
The men running on his laptop represented the happy and physically fit staff that would manage the subsea facility.
"Our intention is to put all the exploration and production under the ice. Surface is not friendly."
I blurted, "You're building this in Russia?"

end of excerpt.

There is something to ponder while you absent mindedly stir your afternoon cocktail with your swizzle stick .
Nuclear powered oil and gas tankers, under the Arctic ice cap.
The perfect crime...invisible to the rest of the world.
That doesn't even begin to address the issue of when things go wrong...oh no...that comes later...

Oh...and if you are pondering a Hollywood script on this, put me down for 10% off the top. Please and thank-you.