1. INTRODUCTION In 1993, Vice President Gore (USA) and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin (Russia) held talks on using classified image data from both nations for environmental purposes. As a result of these meetings, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) was formed in 1995 as an entity within the United States-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation (the Gore- Chenomyrdin Commission). Its mission is: “to explore approaches of the two countries to the uses for environmental purposes of unclassified information products derived from classified national security systems as well as procedures for joint studies utilizing such products.” EWG projects were started to address the following topics: military base cleanup, forestry, arctic climatology, disaster monitoring, and oil and gas development in arctic and subarctic regions. The subject of this paper is the oil and gas project: improving environmental risk assessments through the use of national security systems (NSS) data. The purpose of this final report is to describe the direction and progress of the oil and gas project.
