There is a catch 22 on drilling in the Arctic.
Global warming sounds like a good deal since it's that damned ice that prevents us from drilling there now. The problem is that global warming is shutting down the conveyor belt that makes the Gulf Stream run north and warm up the arctic.
With the conveyor belt shutting down that rapidly thinning ice up in the Arctic may and probably will start growing thicker again, until global warming is strong enough to overpower the effect of not having the gulf stream any more.
So far bigger, more powerfull, and more plentiful hurricaines in the Gulf of Mexico and also thicker sea ice off Alaska.
The good news is the top layer of permafrost that was prematurely melting in the Alaska summers and shutting down the construction period early and opening it late for the last few years will start freezing earlier and melting later again for when we open the ANWR.
Oh great. Lots of deep thinking going on here. Is this whole pile of shit what we call "human nature" Adios amigos.
The thermohaline circulation (THC), otherwise known as the "conveyor" in the North Atlantic, is not likely to shut down anytime soon and does not affect peak oil issues or future production in the Arctic. Search at realclimate.org for some relevant posts.
Agreed, and anytime soon is far in excess of a thousand years in any of the Global Circulation Models.    Simply, the last time is shut down there was a kilometre of ice over New York State; that ice dam burst and allowed a huge reservoir of fresh water over Southern Ontario and the Ohio Valley to flush out the Hudson River and St Lawrence.  We will never ever see that circumstance again for tens of thousand of years.

One must take care not to confuse the premise of Hollywood movies for reality.

Actually this is a natural cycle. We used to have ice boat races on the Hudson until about a hundred years ago when it got too warm in the winter. Ice boats were the fastest things on earth till around 1900. It was a big thing with the millionaires who built all those lovely mansions along the Hudson near where I grew up.
It's just going to go back to the cold part of the cycle called "The Little Ice Age" for a while. No big deal in human terms. More sea ice up north, more hurricaines down south. It doesn't stop so much as just slow down a little. There is still going to be cold air and cold water and hot air and hot water, just not as much as the last few hundred years or so.
Well, we think. A good volcano could kick us into a "Year Without A Summer" event, otherwise known as "Eighteen Hundred And Froze To Death". Mass famine and the death of hundreds of millions of people.
Then we'll be thankfull for all that CO2 to moderate things. The coal and oil corporation people will be heroes.
There isn't anything we can do about it anyway, so we'll see what happens.