Russia’s Claims to the Arctic Shelf…and Its Oil
It’s easy to declare a chunk of land belongs to your country. It’s a lot harder to put that into practice, especially when that new territory is one that’s in the center of the global warming debate. But Russia is trying to do just that, and took a new step in that direction yesterday.
On Sept. 23, President Dmitri Medvedev told his Security Council to start drafting plans for governmental policy in a huge area of the Arctic Shelf. The area is one of huge deposits of natural gas and shelf hydrocarbon. The area is also home to the Northern Sea Route, the quickest way to get from Europe to the Americas and Asia.
Said President Medvedev at an earlier Sept. meeting in Moscow: “This region is of strategic importance for the country. We must reliably ensure Russia’s national interests in the Arctic for a long term.”
Russia, however, has competition.
Since 1996, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway have all had economic zones in the Artic Ocean. And even though Russian explorers hoisted up a flag in the Arctic region on an Aug. 2007 trip to the North Pole, all these countries are still vying for their own claims in the area, exploring and collecting geological data.
It’s the hydrocarbon resources that are at the heat of the argument. And like most other arguments these days, the oil potential of these resources is why the Arctic countries are sending out expeditions to stake their claims.
The U.S. Geological Society studies 25 geological provinces in the Arctic, 17 of which could give us a lot of petroleum. And the International Geological Congress says that 300 barrels of oil equivalents could be discovered in the next couple of decades.
No wonder the Russians have their eyes on this prize! The motherland still has to file a claim to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, but it seems to me like it’s a longshot. Russia wouldn’t want to give up this area, so why would any of the other countries, especially the United States?
Photo credit: perfil at Flickr under a Creative Commons License
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Pp pp pff pffthh.
once again, the russians want to bend the rules.
the tragedy of all of this is that canada is such a gutless country; they’ll probably let the russians have their way
[...] military and political circumstances”. These diverse circumstances include its controversial claims to large portions of the Arctic shelf. With the possible opening of the NorthWest Passage and the [...]