Canada bolsters Arctic seabed claims

Canada has launched an evidence-gathering program as it sets the stage for a territorial arm wrestling with Russia over rights to the Arctic seabed and who can lay claim to the geographic North Pole.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ordered federal officials to develop a more expansive international claim for ocean-floor resources after the initial submission they presented to him failed to include the Pole.

The result will be overlapping claims by Canada and Russia, with expectations that Denmark will also outline its case for the Pole.

The Arctic region is believed to contain as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered energy resources and countries are tabling scientific evidence with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to win control of those assets.

Russia filed a submission in 2001 and was told its bid required more supporting evidence, while Denmark is expected to enter the contest in 2014.

The Canadian government wants more firsthand scientific evidence, including supporting information from mapping and research.

The United Nations convention allows a country to secure control of the ocean floor beyond the internationally-recognized 200-nautical-mile limit if it can demonstrate the seabed is an extension of its continental shelf.

Processing the claims goes to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which is overloaded with a backlog of cases.

It turns overlapping claims back to the countries involved which are supposed to negotiate a solution under rules agreed to by all signatories to the U.N. convention.

The key to Canada’s claim is whether it can establish that an underwater mountain ridge called the Lomonosov Ridged is linked to Canadian territory.

Rob Huebert, associate director of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, welcomed Harper’s decision to “push the submission as far as we are entitled under international law” rather than “prematurely surrendering” the North Pole.

—Gary Park