MOSCOW – Two small Russian submarines completed a risky voyage deep below the North Pole Thursday, planting their country’s flag in a titanium capsule on the Arctic Ocean floor to symbolically claim what could be vast energy reserves beneath the seabed.
Warming global temperatures have made the region, a frozen terra incognita for most of human history, increasingly open to shipping and energy exploration.
Thursday’s dive was part serious scientific expedition and part political theater. But it could mark the start of a fierce legal scramble for control of the sea bed among nations that border the Arctic, including Russia, the U.S., Canada, Norway and Denmark, through its territory Greenland.
Uh-Oh, here we go again.
Is the database a little bit messed up today? I’ve already posted on this one… and its gone…
Why do you think they call it the ‘cold war’?
They are to late.. I claimed the entire planet some time ago.
And on the opposite pole we got…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_territorial_claims
The U.S.A. planted the flag on the moon. I guess the U.S.A. can claim the moon. 🙂
In Russia the flag plants you. [obligatory Russia joke]
Unlike the Moon, there are treaties and laws governing who can claim what in the Artic. Interestingly, act of mapping and claims of use will determine who gets how much. While Canada, Denmark and Russia in particular work hard on claiming as much soveregnity as they can in the Arctic, USA lawmakers (yes, that 14% approval rated Congress and friends) do not move a finger and try to ignore the issue.
To better understand deeper reasons behind the recent Russian claim (it actually arrives in last legal moment, see the very end of the quote from the paper presented at the recent NRF meeting):
“Claims over the North Pole:
Canada and Denmark disagree with the Russian Federation over the seabed jurisdictions on the underwater mountain Lomonosov Ridge. In accordance with the UNCLOS, which covers seabed claims, Canada has by December 7, 2013 to submit evidence which will help to determine the extent of its continental shelf over which it exercises exclusive sovereign rights, including potential underwater
reserves of oil, gas and minerals. Canada now conducts surveys and mapping in the area to identify the limits and boundary of its undersea continental shelf that lie beyond the 200-nautical mile EEZ.
Denmark ratified UNCLOS in 2004 and has to put forward its claims towards potential areas and provide data for a submission to the UN by November 16, 2014. The Russian Federation ratified
UNCLOS in 1997 and has to prove by 2007 that the Lomonosov Ridge is a continuation of the Siberian continental shelf.”
That’s one more feat Richard Branson won’t be able to achieve first.
Fine, let the Russians have it. Lets see them drag their apparently successful economy back into the squalor of the post-cold-war era all over again TRYING to capitalize on this supposed resource.
time to start saving. In ten years, you too could go buy a soviet-break-away republic for pennies on the dollar – or whatever the russian equivilant is.
Well, after the Russians spend a few billion rubles, euros or whatever in the legal war to win ownership, then they can start spending some real money on extracting the oil, or gas, or gold, or frozen wooly mammoths, and then those sneaky western capitalists will rig the markets so that the Rooskies lose their ass on the marketing side. All this a minimum of twenty years down range and by then we’ll all be driving solar powered SUV’s.
Good luck, Boris and Natasha.
Santa Claus will totally kick their asses!
The North Pole belongs to Canada. That’s where you send your letters to Santa and the (Canadian!!!) postal code is H0H 0H0.
doug – ROFLMFAO
Better than this story is the followup. Reuters actually ran a photo showing Russian subs there, and it ws actually footage form TITANIC!
http://tinyurl.com/2l9fz5