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Canada builds claim for Arctic frontier
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Canada hopes to expand its territory by the combined size of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and lay claim to vast mineral resources without going to war.
When a C$69 million research effort is completed in about seven years a team of scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada hopes to have the data needed for Canada to assert sovereignty over 1.7 million square kilometers on its Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, including 750,000 square kilometers in the Arctic.
Michael Byers, an international law expert at the University of British Columbia, said the aim is to extend Canada’s border to embrace an area that may have “comparable oil and gas resources” to Alberta.
“If Canada can expand its size it will essentially capture its next frontier,” he said.
But Byers conceded there will likely be counter claims from the United States or Russia, regardless of the technical data that is gathered.
Agreement gives signatories 10 years When Canada ratified the Law of the Sea in 2003 it became part of an international convention that gives signatories a decade to extend their maritime boundaries beyond the 200-mile nautical zone in which they have exclusive rights to whatever lies in or beneath the waters (excluding fish).
But the onus is on a claimant to prove that its continental landmass reaches undersea beyond 200 miles.
Currently scientists are mapping the seafloor north of Ellesmere Island, focused on the Lomonosov Ridge that forms a long, narrow undersea mountain chain that extends from the island to the North Pole, then south to the Russian coast.
The key for scientists is to establish that the 1,100 mile long ridge is a “natural” extension of Ellesmere, although they must prove that a valley between the ridge and Ellesmere was formed by tectonic movement and that the underlying bedrock is connected to the island.
For the scientists, the potential mineral value is of less importance than what they call a “claim for posterity.”
In a CanWest News interview, Ruth Jackson, chief scientist for the Lomonosov project, observed: “When the U.S. claimed Alaska, lots of people said, ‘What good is Alaska?’”
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