There is no need to guess.  The fact they are even bothering with shale oil at all and these mega deep water rigs before that should tell you what's going on.  All these world leaders have been visiting Antarctica recently.  Unless they're building some type of nuclear fallout shelter there, I assume they might be trying to get oil out of there too.  If it's not fossil fuels, I definitely want to know what all these people are doing in Antarctica since it would probably be even more interesting.