Scientific surveys proclaim that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought. But for foreign ministers and other representatives of the five Arctic nations meeting there - Russia, Canada, Denmark (Greenland is its autonomous province), Norway, and the United States - climate change was just an opportunity to carve the regions mineral riches.
The Arctic Ocean summit participants seem to have agreed on how to divide the Arctic Ocean, and, most important, its mineral-rich continental shelf. In the Ilulissat Declaration, the five Arctic coastal nations agreed to let the United Nations rule on conflicting territorial claims on the region’s seabed. Last summer, Russia sparked what has been widely described as a rush for Arctic Ocean oil and gas by sending a mini-submarine to plant a flag at the North Pole sea floor. Canada responded to Russia’s flag-planting by saying it would move troops to its north to assert Arctic sovereignty.
The Russians want to use the pole as the dividing feature. Russia contends the underwater Lomonosov Ridge links Siberia to the Arctic seabed, evidence of which may allow the country to extend its territory under international law. Jacob Verhoef, the director of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) told New Europe the issue of the Arctic division is political. “The pole is simply a point on the map ... Scientifically there is nothing special about the pole,” he said telephonically from Halifax where he is currently involved in a project, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, searching the outer limits of the Canadian self.
He said some countries are using the so-called “sector principle,” under which straight lines are drawn to the pole and that is one way to divide it up. Other counties advocate what is called the “equidistant principle,” which is extending an offshore line and measure the distances to the coastline so that they are the same for each of the two countries. “Scientifically all of them make sense or none of them make sense. I don’t think it makes too much of a difference, but then of course you get into the next thing and that is politically it probably makes a heck of a lot of difference,” Verhoef said. The Canada-based scientist said the Russia claim is somewhere in between. “Probably everybody adapts it to their maximum advantage to some extent and I think that’s what has happened,” Verhoef said, laughing.
Canada is also hoping that country’s grasp for potential undersea oil and other submerged resources could reach beyond the North Pole. Within Canada, the National Energy Board has put up land leases in the Beaufort Sea. In July 2007, ExxonMobil Canada and majority-owned affiliate Imperial Oil were jointly awarded 100 percent interest in the EL446 block in the Beaufort Sea offshore Canada, Margaret Ross, media advisor at Exxon Mobil, told New Europe. “ExxonMobil has developed considerable expertise in Arctic operations. For example, on Russia’s remote Sakhalin Island, ExxonMobil is safely producing oil and gas in a sub-Arctic environment that for many years was considered unsuitable for large-scale development,” Ross said.
Environmental organisations are angry. “The reason that the Arctic is so affected by climate change is the reason why it shouldn’t be touched by exploration because it is one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world so instead of having these countries race to see who can damage the Arctic more they should try to protect it as much as possible from climate change and any other human activity. The Arctic belongs to everybody. It doesn’t belong to any nation,” Mahi Sideridou, Greenpeace Europe’s climate campaigner, told New Europe.
In the next couple of decades, the Arctic will become more accessible. But Verhoef said that developing mineral resources would take a lot longer if at all. The Arctic will become economically viable only if there is an infrastructure, which means that the first development areas will need significant investment. “The industry has to be convinced that there are resources and they have to be economically viable to do that,” the scientist said.
The US Geological Survey estimates the region may hold up to 25 percent of the world’s oil and gas, but Verhoef said there is a lot of uncertainty. “There is a lot of uncertainty and uncertainty always makes it very difficult for the industry to invest,” he said. “It’s probably fair to say that in the northern part of most countries and certainly the offshore in the Arctic, we know less about that part of the globe than we know about the moon.”