What’s bad for polar bears and walruses is actually quite golden for Shell and other oil companies. While scientists, environmentalists and policymakers fret over the shrinking of the polar icecap, oil executives are planning to take advantage of the expanding open waters around the North Pole to explore undeveloped reserves of petroleum and natural gas. At the rate of the current melt, scientists estimate that the Arctic seas could be essentially free of ice in the summertime by mid-century, opening the way to extract the 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the region, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.