Russia's race for the Arctic -- The Washington Times, America's Newspaper1

Russia's race for the Arctic 

By planting the Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole and claiming a sector of the Continental Shelf the size of Western Europe, Moscow generated a new source of international tension, seemingly out of the blue.

Geopolitics and geoeconomics are driving Moscow's latest moves. The potential profits are certainly compelling. Geologists believe a quarter of the world's oil and gas — billions of barrels and trillions of cubic feet — may be located on the Arctic Continental Shelf and possibly under the polar cap.

The Arctic, the final frontier, also harbors precious, ferrous and nonferrous metals, as well as diamonds. At today's prices, these riches may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And if the ice caps melt and shrink, not only will these resources will be more accessible than they are today, but a new sea route along the northern coast of Eurasia may be open to reach them.

The other side of the economic coin is political — the exploration and exploitation of polar petroleum and other resources may be a mega-project for the 21st century — the kind of opportunity that Russia is seeking to satisfy its ambition to become what President Vladimir Putin has termed "an energy superpower."

In 2001 Russia filed a claim to expand the continental shelf with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf under the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), to which it is a party. However, in 2002 the commission declared it neither accepts nor rejects the Russian claim, and demanded more study. Russia plans to resubmit the claim, and expects to get the answer by 2010.

Russia's claims are literally on thin ice. Moscow is extending its claim to the Arctic Ocean seabed based on its control of the Lomonosov Ridge and the Mendeleev Ridge, two underwater geological structures that jut into the ocean from the Russian continental shelf. However, it looks like the ridges do not extend far enough to justify Moscow's claims beyond its 200-mile economic zone, while other countries also claim control of the same area.

This latest move by Moscow is also a chilling throwback to the 1930s Stalinist attempts to conquer the Arctic during the years when the U.S.S.R. was seized by fear and hatred. Stalin and his henchmen executed "enemies of the people" by the hundreds of thousands in mock trials and in the basements of the Lubyanka secret police headquarters, or in unnamed killing sites in the woods. Those not yet arrested were forced to applaud the "heroes of the Arctic": pilots, sailors and explorers, in a macabre celebration of Stalinist tyranny.

To the regime's critics, today's expedition is a chilly reminder of the brutal era when millions of Gulag prisoners were sent to the frozen expanses to build senseless mega-projects for the power-crazy dictator.

The Arctic mission is Putin’s revenge on the USA for Alaska

The Arctic mission is Putin's revenge on the USA for Alaska 

A Lithuanian business daily Verslon Zinios published an interesting editorial on Russia's claim of Arctic.  Few passages from the editorial.

First of all the mini subs which planted the flag on the Arctic Sea bed  of the Ocean are called Mir-1 and Mir-2.  The daily notices that the Mir station was orbiting the Earth from 1986 until 2001.  It is also symbolic that the last Soviet citizen Cosmonaut Mr Krikaliov also flew in Mir station.  It happened that he took off still in the Soviet Union and landed already few months since the Soviet Union was a history.

The daily notices that the stories about claims of a territory in the Moon and in the Mars could be read in the 'Various news' sections but the Titanium flag on the Sea bed is a fact of life and this issue will be seriously discussed at the UN sessions and in the capitals of the world.  Once again, Russian has taken an initiative and is winning the PR war.

The editorial states that it looks as if the citizens of planet will not find a substituted to oil and gas in the nearest future not only Europe will be more dependent from the Russian energy resources, but the USA will follow the Europe's fate.  That would be Putin's sweet revenge on the USA for 'buying off Alaska from Russia'.

It could only be added that the battle for Arctic only just begun.  Sine this is a battle for the energy recourses it could get very hot in the coldest Earth's continent.  The Kremlin strategists should hope for a war in the Middle East, the European Union's short sightness on the energy unity, and the acceleration of the Global worming.  The future is bright, the future is Arctic! 

Arctic explorers return to hero's welcome in Moscow

Arctic explorers return to hero's welcome in Moscow 

MOSCOW: Russian explorers who planted a flag beneath the ice at the North Pole returned to a hero's welcome in Moscow on Tuesday and shrugged off foreign criticism of their mission.

"The Arctic always was Russian, and it will remain Russian," the expedition leader, Artur Chilingarov, said after arriving at Vnukovo airport near Moscow, where well-wishers brandished bottles of champagne and Russian flags.

"I am happy that we placed a Russian flag on the ocean floor, where no one has ever been before, and I couldn't care less what some foreigners say."

Russia wants to extend right up to the North Pole the territory it controls in the Arctic, believed to hold vast resources of oil and natural gas that are expected to become more accessible as climate change melts the ice cap.

A mechanical arm of a small submarine dropped a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed at a depth of 4,261 meters, or 13,980 feet, last week, staking a symbolic claim to the energy riches of the Arctic.

But the move has provoked criticism from abroad.

Foreign Minister Peter Mackay of Canada has said Russia was behaving like a 15th-century explorer. In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said: "A metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor" did not have "any legal standing or effect on this claim."

In remarks broadcast on state television, President Vladimir Putin congratulated the team of explorers, saying "Your work was interesting, crucial, important for the country and not without risk."

But Putin, in more cautious remarks, also said the team's achievement would provide the groundwork for Russia's official position on who owns the Arctic Ocean seabed. "This, of course, must be discussed with our colleagues and be proven in international bodies," he said, according to the Russian media.

Canadian military heads North to show the flag on Arctic sovereignty

Canadian military heads North to show the flag on Arctic sovereignty

OTTAWA — The Canadian military began a 10-day "sovereignty operation" in the Arctic on Tuesday, just days after the government dismissed a Russian expedition to the region as "no threat to Canadian sovereignty."
 
The military operation, dubbed "Operation NANOOK 07," is a joint exercise involving 600 personnel from the navy, army and air force, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Coast Guard.
 
From August 7 to 17, the troops and personnel will practise responding to two scenarios in and around Iqaluit, the Baffin Island coast, and the Hudson Strait. The first involves the Canadian Forces answering a call from the RCMP for assistance with a drug bust and the second will have the military helping the Coast Guard with an environmental protection event.
 
While the exercises are focused on those specific tasks, their very presence in the North will serve the greater purpose of protecting Canada's territory, the military said in a news release.
 
"Canadian Forces operations in Canada's North are an important dimension toward ensuring the protection of Canadian sovereignty," Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais said. "Quite simply, these exercises allow us to turn our knowledge and skills into valuable experience." 

The operation comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper sets out on a three-day visit to the North that ends in Iqaluit on Friday. It also follows the uproar last week when Russia planted its flag on the North Pole seabed.
 
Russia's dive below the Arctic waters is widely seen by observers as a symbol of its determination to claim a large chunk of the Arctic Ocean floor.
 
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay described Russia's bold move as "just a show" of Russian bravado and "no threat to Canadian sovereignty."  But as MacKay downplayed the Russian expedition, Harper said it was another indication of the growing importance of the Arctic region and of Canada's need to assert its sovereignty over it.
 
In recent months, the Canadian government has been stepping up its focus on the Arctic. Harper recently announced a plan to spend $7 billion on the construction, retrofitting and maintenance of up to eight reinforced Arctic patrol vessels.
 
"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic," Harper said last month. "We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it."

Sentido.tv :: Economics :: Russian Mission to Claim Arctic Sea-bed in Bid to Drill for Oil, Gas

Sentido.tv :: Economics :: Russian Mission to Claim Arctic Sea-bed in Bid to Drill for Oil, Gas

RUSSIAN MISSION TO CLAIM ARCTIC SEA-BED IN BID TO DRILL FOR OIL, GAS
4 OTHER 'ARCTIC' NATIONS SAY MOVE IS MISGUIDED, FEAR RUSSIA TRYING TO UNILATERALLY ALTER MARITIME TREATIES
7 August 2007

Russia has launched an exploration mission to the North Pole, in an effort to plant a flag at the sea bottom and claim the land (and by extension the resources that lie beneath the sea-bed). Some of the world's most extensive reserves of natural gas and possibly petroleum are believed to lie beneath Arctic Ocean sea-bed.

Five nations border the Arctic Ocean, and each has laid out legal claims to part of the territory leading to the North Pole, though in legal and technical terms, the Pole is far enough from any actual continental land-mass to be well into international waters. At present, no international body manages the resources found at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, or their extraction or commerce relating to them.

Russia has put for the argument that according to studies of faultlines and major tectonic plates, the Arctic Ocean sea-bed is part of the continental shelf extending north from Russia, to the Pole. This would not actually place the resources under the sea at the open disposal of Russia, as territorial waters are not measured in this way out in the open sea.

Sergei Balyasnikov, a spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic research institute that prepared the expedition, told the AP: "For the first time in history people will go down to the sea bed under the North Pole," adding: "It's like putting a flag on the moon." The comment is a clear reference to the pioneering American expedition to the lunar surface, and an attempt to assuage fears that Russia is conducting the expedition as a "land grab" as some have suggested.

According to CNN's reporting, "Russian scientists hope to dive in two mini-submarines beneath the pole to a depth of more than 13,200 feet, and drop a metal capsule containing the Russian flag on the sea bed."

The cable news service also adds that the Russian government is claiming 460,000 square miles of the Arctic shelf as Russian geological territory, in the hopes of securing as Russian resources the estimated 10 billion tons of oil and gas thought to be waiting for extraction under the sea-bed of the Arctic Ocean. [s]

Russia's Deep-Sea Flag-Planting at North Pole Strikes a Chill in Canada

Russia's Deep-Sea Flag-Planting at North Pole Strikes a Chill in Canada

TORONTO, Aug. 6 -- A dramatic submarine dive to plant the Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole last week has rattled Canadian politics and underscored the growing stakes as the ice cap melts in the oil-rich Arctic.

Canada and the United States scoffed at the legal significance of the dive by a Russian mini-sub to set the flag on the seabed Thursday. "This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags" to claim territory, Canada's minister of foreign affairs, Peter MacKay, told reporters.

But the government here has been thrown on the defensive by the Russian action, accused by critics of doing too little to meet a deadline for the five Arctic nations to map and claim huge areas of the Arctic seabed.

A U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker left Seattle on Monday for an area 500 miles north of Barrow, Alaska, where a contingent of 20 scientists are to continue compiling an undersea map in preparation for a U.S. claim of the resources there.

Canada has not equipped itself to do the same. It has no icebreakers heavy enough to tackle the Arctic ice head-on.

In the view of opposition leader Jack Layton, head of the New Democratic Party, the government has responded with little more than rhetoric to threats to Canadian sovereignty in its frozen backyard. "Canada must move quickly and make immediate, strategic investments in its Arctic," Layton said Sunday.

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea gives each of the five Arctic nations -- Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and Norway -- 10 years after their ratification of the treaty to map out the Arctic seabed.

The maps, along with sediment samples and other scientific information, can be used to claim parts of the seabed that are extensions of the continental shelf of each nation. The claim would apply to the buried resources, not to the water above.

For years, progress under the international treaty was slow. The United States has not ratified the convention, though observers expect that to happen soon under the Democratic-controlled Congress. Global warming has added a sudden urgency to the process by thinning the Arctic ice cap, making drilling and shipping more feasible.

The potential rewards are great. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas lies in the Arctic.

"The huge irony is that we are only talking about this because humanity has burned so much oil and gas that the ice is melting," said Michael Byers, an international law expert at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver . "It could be a vicious cycle: Climate change is opening up the Arctic to oil and gas drilling, which almost certainly will cause more climate change."

Russia, the first of the Arctic nations to ratify the treaty, has undertaken extensive mapping using its huge nuclear-powered icebreakers. Norway and Denmark have also conducted undersea mapping. Canada, which ratified the treaty in 2003, is cooperating with Denmark on the ice northeast of Ellesmere Island, setting off explosives to seismically map the ground under the Lincoln Sea region of the Arctic Ocean .

The United States has been mapping the Chukchi Cap area since 2003, according to Larry Mayer, director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire . That area is not expected to conflict with Russian claims, he said.

Mayer, who will join the icebreaker USCGC Healy as chief scientist, said the U.S. mapping effort will be greatly aided by sonar mapping done by U.S. Navy nuclear submarines that routinely cruised under the Arctic cap during the Cold War. That classified information has gradually been made public for scientists' use, Mayer said.

Canada historically has considered much of the North American side of the frozen Arctic its territory and bristles at U.S. claims that the thawing Northwest Passage through that area is an international strait. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is to tour Arctic communities this week, has called the Arctic "central to our identity as a northern nation."

But Canada has no northern deep-sea port and no submarines capable of traveling under the Arctic cap; its aging icebreakers were built for work on the Arctic's edges and in the St. Lawrence Seaway. It has a minimal military presence in the north and counts on the traditional presence of the native Inuit people to bolster its claims to the thousands of scattered islands that make up the Canadian archipelago.

Layton said Canada's larger problem is its failure to try to stop the warming that is opening up the Arctic. "Climate change policy is northern policy, and we have no time to waste," he said.