Sen. Mark Begich said efforts to drill in the U.S. Arctic offshore involving Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and StatOil will require 5,000 people. But that’s a small part of the changes the Arctic is seeing, which include increased shipping and tourism.

Those efforts and others will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, including:

• Carpentry and architecture for new Arctic housing and buildings;

• Food service providers for work camps;

• Scientists to conduct environmental studies.

“It’s not a question of if the Arctic will be developed,” said Begich. “It’s a question of how we manage that development.”