US expanded its claims to Arctic continental shelf by 1m sq.km
The United States unilaterally announced the expansion of claims to sovereignty over a significant part of the continental shelf in the Arctic and Bering Sea, with Russia and Canada also laying claims to part of the territory in this zone, TASS reports
According to Bloomberg, President Joe Biden’s administration has ‘drastically expanded US sovereignty claims on the ocean floor by an area twice the size of California’. This refers to a previously published statement from the Department of State, which contains a new extended continental shelf map indicating the outer boundaries of the area over which the US claims sovereignty.
It is noted that the so-called extended continental shelf covers about 1 million square kilometres and is mainly located in the Arctic and Bering Sea. The area is becoming ‘of increasing strategic importance’ where Canada and Russia also have claims.
According to international law, the North Pole and the adjacent Arctic Ocean region do not belong to any country. In addition to Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States lay claim to various areas of the Arctic Ocean floor. The interest of states in the northern seas is dictated by the fact that their depths contain 83 billion tonnes of standard fuel, of which about 80 percent comes from the Barents and Kara seas. At the same time, the probability of discovering new large oil and gas fields in virtually unexplored shelf areas is very high.
In August 2015, Russia submitted an application to the UN Commission to expand the boundaries of the continental shelf in the Arctic by 1.2 million square kilometres. The plans include annexing the Lomonosov Ridge and other areas of the seabed, including the Podvodnikov Basin, the Mendeleev Rise, the southern end of the Gakkel Ridge and the North Pole zone. According to preliminary estimates, this will increase potential hydrocarbon reserves by 5 billion tonnes of standard fuel.
