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Points of contention in Arctic claims The resource potential and past history both play their parts when it comes to offshore jurisdiction around the Arctic Ocean Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The Arctic claims map recently published by researchers at Britain’s University of Durham (see story in last week’s Petroleum News) highlights the areas where various nations are scrambling to lay claim to resource rights under the waters of the Arctic Ocean. But an examination of the map reveals where contention over land claims is particularly high.
The map shows both the agreed boundaries of national jurisdiction and the areas where one of the six nations that surround the Arctic Ocean may be able to lay claims based on existing laws and treaties. The map also depicts areas that are currently the subject of international territorial disputes.
And the July publication of a new assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey of the oil and gas resource of the Arctic has highlighted the potential economic importance of the polar region — USGS has estimated the possible existence of 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Arctic, with substantial amounts of those oil and gas resources lying offshore.
Russian flag Although some Arctic nations have for several years been assembling claims to parts of the Arctic Ocean under the terms of the international Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty, the August 2007 planting of a Russian flag on the seabed on the Lomonosov Ridge at the North Pole catapulted the whole issue of Arctic sovereignty into the forefront of world attention.
The Arctic claims map reflects the flag planting event by showing the North Pole at the apex of an extensive triangular shaped area of Russian-claimed territory, extending to a broad area of undisputed Russian continental shelf under the Laptev, East Siberian and Russian Chukchi Seas.
But Canada says that the Lomonosov Ridge, including the area of the Russian flag planting, is actually an extension of the Canadian continental shelf. And the proximity of the Lomonosov Ridge to Greenland has also caused Denmark to enter the fray over territorial rights in the region.
Source rock? In 2004 an international team drilling a well on the Lomonosov Ridge near the North Pole discovered a horizon containing the remains of azolla plants in Tertiary rocks, thus raising the possibility of the existence of a hydrocarbon source rock in the region. However, in its new Arctic assessment, USGS assigned the somewhat modest oil and gas resources of 1.1 billion barrels and 7 trillion cubic feet to what it termed the Lomonosov-Marakov province, a geologic province that encompasses much of the Russian-claimed territory.
On its eastern side, the Russian-claimed territory abuts a huge area of the Amerasian basin, north of the Beaufort Sea, where the United States could make a territorial claim.
And extensive parts of the Beaufort Sea continental shelf include some of the more prospective parts of what USGS terms the Amerasian province, a region with relatively high oil and gas potential that includes the Arctic Ocean continental slope offshore Canada and the United States.
Beaufort Sea boundary However, there has been a long-standing disagreement between these two countries regarding the location of the offshore international boundary in this petroliferous region. According to the Durham University researchers Canada argues that an 1825 treaty between Canada and Russia defines the boundary as running through the Beaufort Sea along the 141-degrees-west meridian. The United States, on the other hands, says that there is no defined maritime international boundary and that the boundary should follow the median line between the U.S. and Canadian Beaufort Sea coastlines.
Further east, both Canada and Denmark (via Greenland) could claim extensive areas of the Arctic Ocean to the north of their current areas of jurisdiction. However, these areas do not appear to have high oil and gas potential.
Barents Sea dispute To the north of Europe, there has been a long-standing dispute over the international boundary between Norway and Russia in the Barents Sea, a region rich in oil and gas, as well as rich in fisheries. The Durham University researchers say that Norway wants the boundary to follow the median line between the two countries through the sea, while Russia wants a sector boundary extending due north but deviating around the Svalbard area.
And the area of the Svalbard archipelago, a group of islands that includes Spitzbergen and lies on the petroliferous Barents platform, has also been the focus of international contention. A treaty signed in 1920 gave Norway sovereignty over the archipelago but rights of access for residence and industrial activities to the countries that signed the treaty. There are currently 39 countries that are registered to the treaty, according to the Durham University researchers. However, there is an on-going dispute between Russia and Norway about whether the treaty rights extend over the entire Svalbard economic exclusion zone, rather than just the archipelago’s land and territorial waters.
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