Poles Apart
The Times reports that the battle for exploration rights in the Arctic is heating up with Denmark being the latest country to throw its hat in the ring over the ownership of the North Pole.
So we now have Denmark, Canada, America and Russia all jockeying for position although I thought I read somewhere that Norway was in the running as well.
But I have my doubts that the United Nations will come up with a solution because if Crimea is anything to go by, Russia will presumably feel able to annex parts of the frozen north if it doesn't like the 'referee's' decision.
Denmark lays claim to riches of the Arctic
The Arctic, much of which is neutral territory, contains 30 per cent of the world’s untapped natural gas and 15 per cent of its oil, the US Geological Survey says Sylvain Cordier/Ardea/Caters News Agency
By Ben Hoyle - The Times
The battle for the Arctic is heating up after Denmark became the first country to lodge a formal claim to the North Pole and any energy reserves beneath it.
Martin Lidegaard, the Danish foreign minister, was expected to deliver the claim for about 900,000 sq km of territory north of Greenland to the UN panel that will award control of the region.
He described the application as a “historic milestone for Denmark and many others” but said he did not expect to receive a decision for “a few decades”.
According to Danish scientists, new research shows that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,800km underwater mountain range running from off the coast of Greenland to the sea above eastern Siberia, is geologically attached to Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory. The North Pole is in the area of the ridge.
The Arctic, much of which is neutral territory, contains 30 per cent of the world’s untapped natural gas and 15 per cent of its oil, according to the US Geological Survey.
Denmark’s conclusions are likely to be fiercely contested by the other countries with an interest in exploiting the potentially rich resources and growing strategic value of the Arctic, including Canada, the United States and Russia.
So far, none of the other claimants has formally submitted their cases, but tensions over the region have been rising for some time.
In March Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, called for the US and Canada to counter Russian assertiveness in the Arctic, where Moscow has been “aggressively reopening military bases” left over from the Cold War.
President Putin of Russia has intensified efforts to press Moscow’s military, economic and legal claims to the far north. In 2007 a Russian explorer in a small submarine planted a Russian flag on the sea-bed under the North Pole.
In the past two years Mr Putin has ordered several large scale naval and military exercises in the region.
On March 15, at about the same time that Russia annexed Crimea, its acquisition of a section of sea bed in the Sea of Okhotsk about the size of Switzerland was approved by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the body that will adjudicate on the Arctic claims.
