Arctic: Russian claim of territorial rights - full text
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Russia's Minister of Natural Resources Yury Trutnev on Oct. 30 announced that the Russian government was preparing a bid to present to the UN, which, if approved, would allow Russia to include part of the Arctic seabed in its economic zone.
The minister said that a recent scientific mission to the Arctic had gathered the necessary data to prove that the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,800 km underwater mountain chain that stretched across the floor of the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Siberia, passing through the geographic North Pole, was an extension of Russia's territory.
Immediate context
A number of countries were actively pursuing claims to the resources of the Arctic, interest in which had recently increased in response to the melting of the north polar ice cap, which was gradually opening formerly icebound shipping lanes and enabling access to an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves.
The global arbiter of Arctic claims was the UN-hosted Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), which administered the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982.
Under Article 76 of the Convention, each of the five Arctic seaboard countries—Russia, Canada, Norway, the USA, and Denmark (via its semiautonomous Arctic dependency of Greenland)—had the right to exploit the Arctic seabed in an exclusive economic zone extending 370 km (200 nautical miles) from its coast, provided the area did not overlap with another country’s territory. None of these zones reached the North Pole, which was international territory, but the Convention allowed a country to extend its zone if it could prove that underwater ridges on the Arctic seabed were a natural geological extension of its own continental shelf.
Two Russian mini-submarines had on Aug. 1 traveled 4, 200 metres below the North Pole to plant a titanium capsule containing the Russian flag in a symbolic gesture of Russia's territorial claim to the Arctic and its mineral resources.
The USA, Canada, and Denmark had responded to the Russian move with their own Arctic expeditions to reassert their claims to the territory's resources. Just days after the Russian explorers planted the flag on the Arctic seabed, the US coast guard icebreaker Healy left Seattle on Aug. 6 for the Bering Sea. The International Herald Tribune reported on Oct. 19 that the expedition had found that the USA potentially had a claim to thousands of square kilometres of mineral-rich ocean floor.
In the days following the Russian expedition, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed the need to use military power to protect Canada’s Arctic interests. Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay had immediately dismissed Russia’s expedition as “just a show”, Reuters news agency reported on Aug. 2, and stated that Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic was longstanding and well-established. On Aug. 7 the government launched a “sovereignty operation”, called Operation Nanook 07, in and around Iqaluit and Baffin Island and the Hudson Strait areas, undertaking exercises to protect and defend the terrority.
Melting of the north polar ice cap was gradually opening the formerly icebound Northwest Passage linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Arctic archipelago, making it a potentially viable route for commercial shipping. Such a route from Europe to Asia would be some 6,500 km shorter than existing waterways. Canada claimed jurisdiction over all the waters of the Northwest Passage, but this claim was disputed by the USA. The Canadian Press reported on Oct. 23 that Canadian researchers had launched a four-year programme to place remote sensors under the Arctic ice and on frozen hilltops to monitor the Arctic Ocean passages. The Associated Press news agency reported on Oct. 25 that the US coast guard had announced that a base in Barrow, the northernmost town in the US state of Alaska, would study potential shipping passages opened by the receding polar ice.
In response to the Russian, US, and Canadian actions, the Danish government launched an Arctic expedition on Aug. 12. The icebreaker Oden was sent to the area north of Greenland as part of a mission to seek evidence to support Denmark's claim that the Lomonosov ridge was an underwater extension of Greenland, rather than Russia. Danish Science and Technology Minister Helge Sander had on Aug. 14 had dismissed Russia's flag-planting as a meaningless gesture.
Reaction and Outlook
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had warned a conference on climate change on Oct. 23 that “There's a ‘Cold War' at the North Pole that we have to prevent.” He told delegates that “Climate change is a threat to worldwide peace and security…Not only Russia but other neighboring nations have also staked claims for fossil fuels in this region…Climate change has made exploitation possible where it was thought not possible.”
Recent scientific studies had indicated that by 2030–2040 global warming would have melted enough of the Arctic ice to make possible the extraction and transportation of undersea oil and gas resources in the Arctic.
Russia's Minister of Natural Resources Yury Trutnev said on Oct. 30 that development of the Lomonosov ridge could bring Russia up to an extra 5 billion metric tons of oil equivalent. Russian Deputy Natural Resources Minister Alexei Varlamov had earlier said that the Arctic territory could add 80 million tons of oil and 426 billion cubic metres of gas to the Russian reserves, bringing the country an additional 1.35 billion metric tons of oil equivalent.
The Reuters news agency noted that the oil industry was evincing strong interest in Arctic oil north of the Canadian border. Receding ice enabled longer drilling seasons in areas requiring open water north of Canadian territory. An ice-free Northwestern Passage would allow workers and supplies to be ferried about more freely. Reuters reported on Oct. 24 that oil companies Imperial Oil and Exxon-Mobil had made a US$600 million bid that won them a big exploration block in Canada's Beaufort Sea.
Since 1982 the US Senate (the upper house of Congress, the federal legislature) had failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The USA objected to the provision of Part XI of the Convention establishing an International Seabed Authority (ISA). UNCLOS had come into effect in 1994; it had been ratified by Norway in 1996, Russia in 1997, Canada in 2003, and Denmark in 2004. However, following Russia’s Arctic expedition support for the Convention appeared to grow in the Senate and commentators speculated that the House may now ratify the UNCLOS. John Bellinger, the state department’s senior legal counsel, had recently claimed that if the USA ratified the law, it could claim sovereignty over “600 miles” (965 km) of seabed off the Alaskan coast.
Finland, Iceland, and Sweden, which along with the five Arctic seaboard countries were members of the Arctic Council formed in 1996, were also widely expected to assert claims to Arctic territory or mineral rights.
Norway's reaction to Russia's Arctic expedition was muted, thought by commentators to be due in large part to the strategic relationship and ongoing co-operation between Norway and Russia in hydrocarbon development in the Arctic region. In 2002 and in subsequent years, the Norwegian and Russian governments had signed a series of agreements on co-operation in the development of hydrocarbons in the Arctic. The expertise of Norwegian companies in drilling in extreme conditions was thought to be considered extremely valuable by Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft and gas monopoly Gazprom.
Unable to assert a claim in the North, the UK planned to assert sovereign rights over a vast area of the remote seabed near the South Pole, The Guardian reported on Oct. 16. On October 18, Argentina's Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said that his country would file a claim to uphold its “sovereign rights” to the oceanic areas around several islands, including the Falklands, the Uruguayan news agency MercoPress reported.
Historical Context
Under the “freedom of the seas” concept dating from the 17th century, a country's national territorial waters were limited to a specified belt of water extending from their coastline, usually three nautical miles (6 km). Originally this was the length of a cannon shot, thus the portion of the water that the sovereign state could defend from its shore. All waters beyond these national boundaries were considered international waters. However, in the early 20th century some countries began extending their territorial claims, often to gain rights over natural resources and fish stocks.
In 1903–05 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage. In 1909 Robert Peary and Matthew Henson of the USA became the first explorers to reach the North Pole. That year Canada claimed the territory extending from its Arctic Sea shore to the North Pole. In 1924 the USA claimed that the North Pole was an underwater continuation of its northernmost state Alaska. The Soviet Union in 1926 claimed the territory from the Kola Peninsula, across the North Pole, to the Bering Strait.
The Arctic region played a major role in World War II, when the Western powers used northern sea lanes to supply the Soviet Union in its struggle against Nazi Germany.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the USA and Canada built a ring of satellite stations to protect the two countries from the threat of nuclear missiles launched by the Soviet Union over the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic was also used by the USA and the Soviet Union and others to test submarines, new weapons, and sonar equipment.
In 1963 significant iron ore deposits were found on Baffin Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, while in 1968 US companies discovered oil at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s Arctic coast. In 1977 an Alaskan pipeline was completed and the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay began large-scale production.
In 1970 Canada extended its Arctic territorial claim to some 19 km from its coastline, effectively claiming sovereignty over several key straits in the Northwest Passage. The USA and Canada in 1988 signed an Arctic co-operation agreement stating that US icebreakers required permission from the Canadian government before navigating the Northwest Passage.
The UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 resulted from the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, which took place from 1973-82. UNCLOS specified that a country could extend its Arctic economic territory if it could prove that underwater ridges on the Arctic seabed were a natural geological extension of its own continental shelf. Subsequently, in 2000 Russia claimed that the Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges were part of its territory. However, in 2004 Denmark declared the Lomonosov ridge to be a continuation of Greenland.
In 2006 Norway filed an application with the UN claiming 250,000 square km in the Norwegian and Barents Seas to be part of its territory.
