It had been investigating the area between Svalbard and Greenland, known as the Fram Strait, named after Nansen's ship.

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In his later career as a diplomat for newly independent Norway and for the League of Nations, Nansen employed the infamous Vidkun Quisling.

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Though hugely wasteful and disorganized under the centralized Communist economy, in the 1970s it still supplied all the Soviet states and, by way of pipelines in Ukraine, even parts of western Europe, says Arild Moe, deputy director at Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Lysaker, Norway.

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As Nansen Saleri, the CEO of Quantum Reserve Impact in Houston and former head of reservoir management for Saudi Aramco, reported in his article in The Wall Street Journal, existing oil capacity exceeds current demand by between 3 million and 5 million barrels of oil a day.

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