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Cold affront - icy reaction to Russia's Arctic exploration
15 August 2007
On 28 July, with an associated blaze of publicity in Russia, the Russian research ship Akademik Fyodorov sailed with a nuclear-powered ice-breaker from Murmansk on a two-week mission to the Arctic.
Russian ice-breakers are often active in this area for research into climate change and to map the seabed for military purposes. However, the Akademik Fyodorov's mission has a far more competitive and geopolitical bent, with the potential exploitation of major oil and gas reserves in the Arctic Ocean the goal.
On 2 August, two Russian mini-submarines reached the ocean floor, planting a Russian flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to claim a large tract of the region and extend what is already the world's largest continental shelf economic zone.
The Arctic is already subject to ongoing international maritime disputes between Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and the US. Given the current high global oil prices, an ever-increasing demand for energy supplies and the forecast impact of climate change leading to the retreat of the Arctic icecap, exploiting undersea Arctic resources is now more feasible than ever before. Given this background, the Akademik Fyodorov's mission is highly contentious.
This is the latest in a series of moves made by Russia to lay claim to a portion of what is estimated by the Russian Research Institute for Ocean Geology and Mineral Resources to be more than 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas reserves. With its current position of having the largest reservoir of natural gas supplies, and now established as the second largest oil producer behind Saudi Arabia, Russia is looking to ensure its supplies remain stable beyond 2030 when the current reserves are predicted to begin drying up. Looking north to the Arctic Ocean is an obvious natural extension of its exploration activities.
The Russian claim is focused on a little known maritime feature called the Lomonosov Ridge. The underwater ridge runs for 1,800 km from the East Siberian Sea across the North Pole to Greenland and the Ellesmere Island area off the Canadian Arctic islands. Its width varies from 60 km to 200 km, rising to 3,500 metres above the seabed.
The claim to the Arctic relies on a belief that the ridge is part of the country's continental shelf. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea established a 12-mile zone for what are called territorial waters and a 200-mile economic zone in which countries have an exclusive right to drill for hydrocarbon and other resources. However, Russia's continental shelf claim, based on the Lomonosov Ridge, extends far beyond this 200-mile zone.