BBC News - Arctic Map, prepared by Durham University, shows dispute hotspots.

Maritime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/staging_site/…

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pd…

British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes. A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership.
Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The UK researchers hope the map will inform politicians and policy makers.
“Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what,” explained Martin Pratt, director of the university’s International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU).

“To be honest, most of the other maps that I have seen in the media have been very simple,” he added.
“We have attempted to show all known claims; agreed boundaries and one thing that has not appeared on any other maps, which is the number of areas that could be claimed by Canada, Denmark and the US.”

Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer. Martin Pratt, Durham University.

The team used specialist software to construct the nations’ boundaries, and identify what areas could be the source of future disputes.

“All coastal states have rights over the resources up to 200 nautical miles from their coastline,” Mr Pratt said. “So, we used specialist geographical software to ‘buffer’ the claims out accurately.”

The researchers also took into account the fact that some nations were able to extend their claims to 350 nautical miles as a result of their landmasses extending into the sea.

Back on the agenda:
The issue of defining national boundaries in the Arctic was brought into sharp relief last summer when a team of Russian explorers used their submarine to plant their country’s flag on the seabed at the North Pole. A number of politicians from the nations with borders within the Arctic, including Canada’s foreign minister, saw it as Moscow furthering its claim to territory within the region.

Mr Pratt said a number of factors were driving territorial claims back on to the political agenda.

“Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer,” he told BBC News. “This is allowing greater exploration of the Arctic seabed.”

Data released by the US Geological Survey last month showed that the frozen region contained an estimated 90 billion barrels of untapped oil.

Mr Pratt added that the nations surrounding the Arctic also only had a limited amount of time to outline their claims. “If they don’t define it within the timeframe set out by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, then it becomes part of what is known as ‘The Area’, which is administered by the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole.”

__________

Countries in the area are Russia, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Canada, the US (Alaska).

We believe that 200 miles sovereignty (that is with exclusion of guaranteed maritime passage rights) from the shores of their land-mass is a foregone conclusion.

Any claims to the extension of those sovereign waters should be rejected. Those further sea-bed rights belong to the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole. We believe that no exception to the above should be allowed. We wrote several times that we expect China to step in and make this point stick.

We believe that this is China’s chance to declare its leading role for the 21st century.

Opinion: Polar Race.
Monday 28 July 2008
by: Guy Taillefer, Le Devoir

 http://www.truthout.org/article/polar-ra…

Guy Taillefer argues in Le Devoir that the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation of the polar depths - that they contain 412 billion barrels of oil, or a third of the planet’s proven reserves - will put additional strain on the already-fragile international understandings with respect to polar sovereignty and development.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …”
Four hundred and twelve billion barrels of oil. A third of the planet’s proven reserves. That’s what the depths of the Arctic contain, according to the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation. One may count on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take advantage of the opportunity to reassert Canada’s “unquestionable” sovereignty over the North - and to reduce the debate over the development of the circumpolar world to a war of flags and icebreakers.
Last Wednesday, after four years of research, the US Geological Survey, the American scientific agency specialized in hydrocarbons, delivered the first exhaustive estimate of potential oil and gas situated north of the polar circle: 90 billion barrels of crude, three times as much natural gas, 20 percent of the probable global reserves of liquefied natural gas…. The news is guaranteed to have a strong impact, given the present context of tightening energy supplies, surging prices at the pump, and the extraordinary growth of demand in developing countries. Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts…. If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases.
Moreover, quite by chance, the US Geological Survey estimates were made public one year, almost to the day, after two little Russian sailors dove to a depth of 4,000 meters in the beginning of August 2007 to plant a flag on the North Pole. This striking gesture - without any legal effect, however - relaunched the debate on the subject of sovereignty over the Arctic in great style.

Cut to the quick, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay decreed that the region Russia coveted was “unquestionably” Canadian.
Unquestionably? That remains to be seen. Experts from the UN, guarantors of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, will say between now and 2013 which between Ottawa and Moscow has the better-founded pretensions from a scientific perspective. At the moment, however, it seems that Russia is better placed to prove geologically that the Lomonossov Dorsal, a chain of undersea mountains that cross the Arctic, is the prolongation of the Russian continental plateau, and not of the Canadian plateau.
Politicians, unfortunately, don’t bother much with such scientific details in their communications with the electorate, preferring to play a nationalistic rhetoric that is easily digested. So the bad scenario would be that, in this race for the summit of the world, the sharing of the Arctic will be less the result of a UN judgment and multinational dialogue than of power struggles between the five countries involved - Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, and Norway. That scenario is altogether plausible.
“The Canadian Arctic is at the heart of our national identity,” Stephen Harper declared last year. He has announced, among other military measures in the last year, an investment of $7 billion over 25 years for buying naval patrol boats. A depressing prospect: that Canada seeks to take on its northern identity is laudable, that it proposes to get there by emphasizing military defense to the detriment of social, ecological and diplomatic initiatives, is much less so. It is difficult in any case to imagine that pugnacious Prime Minister-President Vladimir Putin will allow himself to be intimidated.
Nonetheless, the Harper way remains very questionable, in that it is a thousand leagues from the Canadian Way - based on dialogue and cooperation. Still, the most recent decades have demonstrated that it’s by balancing its own interests with those of its circumpolar neighbors - and not by sticking out its chest - that Canada has succeeded in preserving its Arctic sovereignty.
Moreover, in order to calm tensions, the five held a big meeting last spring, which ended in the participants’ commitment to settle any litigious question “in an orderly way,” to “strengthen their cooperation based on mutual trust and transparency” and to “assure the protection and preservation of the fragile marine environment of the Arctic Ocean.” Empty phrases? The future will show how these beautiful promises that we’d like to see kept will withstand the lust for 412 billion barrels of oil.
———————

We posted several days ago: “Reuters Reports That China Is Planting its Flag in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions. Actually they started already at least in 2003, so this is not just a reaction to the Russian Flag-posting of August 2007.”

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 27th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

So, face up to it - China is also in this game. And why should not Nauru or Grenada also be entiled to some of the profits? if they cannot afford the expense of drilling - bet you Brazil or Japan, even Korea and India, and who knows who else - can!

OK - Now Let Us Sit Down And Talk. For Once We Are Behind China and Expect The Dragon To Stand Its Ground.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …” (Photo: NASA GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory / Allen Lunsford).

The Following just shows how for the many losers from Global Warming there will be also some winners. This change can result not only in wished for positives, but also in potential fights for takeover of the new found wealth.

 We feel the more countries get involved, the less possibility for a single country grab of the resources will be possible. According to the UN approved “The Law Of The Sea” - those resources belong to all humanity and are extraterritorial to country sovereignty. Multiplicity of contenders may thus pose the needed opposition to one country grab onto these resources, and avoidance of rules of the jungle.

BEIJING, Reuters, July 28, 2008 - China plans to install its first long-term deep-sea subsurface mooring system in the Arctic Ocean, to monitor long-term marine changes, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The system will collect data on the temperature, salinity and speed of currents at various depths around 75 degrees north in the Chukchi Sea, where Atlantic and Pacific currents converge above the Bering Strait. That will allow studies of the impact on China’s climate of changes in the Arctic, Xinhua said.
A trap will catch marine life for scientific research, it said, citing Chen Hong Xia, a member of the 122-member expedition team aboard the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, an ice-breaker which set off from Shanghai this month.

The mooring system will be retrieved in 2009.

China is increasing scientific research at both poles at a time when global warming and high resources prices are raising international interest in Arctic and Antarctic territories.

It deployed a 40-day mooring system in the Bering Sea in 2003, and is building a new station at Dome A, the highest point of Antarctica, to study ice cores.

A Russian submersible planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole last August, setting off a race among northern nations to increase their presence in the polar regions.

U.S. firm lays claim to ‘potentially vast’ Arctic oil resources - U.S. firm lays claim to nearly all of what it says will be 400 billion barrels - makes it known, Friday, March 21, 2008, Randy Boswell of the The Ottawa Citizen.
A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean’s undersea oil said yesterday that new geological data suggest a “potentially vast” petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels. That figure is backed by a respected Canadian researcher who recently signed on as the firm’s chief scientific adviser.
Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.

The company, which counts retired B.C. (British Colombia, Canada) Senator Edward Lawson among its directors, has filed a claim with the United Nations to act as the sole “development agent” of Arctic seabed oil and gas.
The firm acknowledges that the Arctic’s petroleum deposits are the “common heritage of mankind,” but has argued that the polar region requires a private “lead manager” to organize a multinational consortium of oil companies to extract undersea resources responsibly and equitably.

The Canadian government has dismissed the company’s “alleged claim” over Arctic oil as having “no force in law,” but experts in polar issues have raised alarms about the firm’s actions, saying they could disrupt efforts to create an orderly regime for exploiting resources and protecting the Arctic environment under international law rather than a marketplace model.

In its latest statement about the polar seabed’s “enormous reserve potential” for petroleum deposits, Arctic Oil & Gas cites recent scientific evidence that huge, floating mats of azolla — a prehistoric fern believed to have covered much of the Arctic Ocean during a planetary hothouse era about 55 million years ago — decomposed soon after the age of the dinosaurs and exist today as “vast hydrocarbon resources” trapped in layers of rock below the polar ice cap.
Jonathan Bujak, a former geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who now works as a private consultant in Canada and Britain, is described in the Arctic Oil & Gas statement as confirming the “highly probable validity” of recent research pointing to rock layers “extremely rich” in “hydrocarbon precursors” throughout the Arctic basin.
Mr. Bujak, who previously worked for PetroCanada as a petroleum geologist, co-authored a landmark 2006 study in the journal Nature that first detailed the ancient azolla explosion that shows up today in Arctic seabed core samples.
Neither Mr. Bujak nor Mr. Lawson could be reached for comment yesterday.
Scientists have predicted that global warming could leave the entire Arctic virtually ice-free for months at a time within 20 years. That prospect has hastened a scramble among nations with a polar coast — namely Canada, Russia, the U.S., Norway and Denmark, which controls Greenland — to try to strengthen their scientific claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to extended territorial sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean floor.
A report issued last week by the European Union’s top two foreign policy officials also highlighted the looming international struggle over Arctic oil deposits. Authored by Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Europe’s commissioner for external relations, the study pointed to “potential consequences for international stability and European security interests” as the retreat of Arctic ice makes shipping and oil and gas exploration a reality in the region.

Noting the “rapid melting of the polar ice caps,” the report noted that “the increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region.”

Click to view the article that takes you to the interactive interactive display

Courtesy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur…

nbsp;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20…

Brace for the Arctic oil rush - Thursday, March 20, 2008, By DAVID HOWELL, LONDON, For The Japan Times.

For decades the world’s major oil companies and their engineering experts have been eyeing the Arctic region and wondering how to get at the oil and gas deposits that are said to lie, in almost legendary quantities, beneath the vast expanses of ice. With the price of crude oil now well above $100, has their moment at last arrived?

Two factors suggest that this may be the case. First, as long as world oil markets were dominated by cheap Mideast oil that could be easily extracted from the open deserts, there was almost no chance of competition from other regions.

But that era that passed. No one believes that oil will ever again be the cheap and plentiful commodity it once was. Even if the largest reserves remain in the Middle East, the whole region is now a caldron of turbulence.

Ideological Islamism, combined with Israeli-Palestinian feuding, Iranian nuclear ambitions and chronic anti-Americanism throughout the area have combined to make Middle East oil not only more expensive but also increasingly unreliable.

Second, the Arctic ice cap is shrinking. Armed with new technology for extracting oil and gas deep down on the seabed, the oil powers now see opportunities opening up across the whole polar region.

All round the Arctic the “circumpolar nations” have been raising their levels of activity and staking claims to sovereign “ownership” of the Arctic space, while delegations from countries as far afield as China, India and Japan have been streaming toward the ice cap and crowding on to survey ships and exploration vessels, all anxious not to be left out of a possible new oil bonanza.

The Russians in particular have made headlines by planting their national flag, in titanium, on the seabed below the North Pole, with a Gazprom spokesman adding that the Russian energy giant expected “major new discoveries” of oil and gas reserves under the Arctic Ocean, and had large-scale prospecting plans for the region.

Meanwhile, Canada has ordered up new naval patrol vessels to “defend its sovereignty over the Arctic.” The United States, stung by Russian activity, has announced plans for two new polar ships, and the Danes have sent a mission to find out how far Greenland opens the way to claims for Arctic sovereignty.

Staying slightly on the sidelines, Norway, having been embroiled in decades of dispute with Russia over demarcation lines in the Barents Sea, has pleaded for an end to “the gold rush.”

What are all these hopeful searchers likely to find? Of course, in one sense the Norwegians, the Russians and the Americans have already arrived and started nibbling round the edges of the Arctic. The Norwegians have their giant Snohvit project and are already bringing ashore very large quantities of gas for liquefaction at the world’s most northerly LNG plant near Hammerfest.

Meanwhile, the Russians are pushing ahead with their equally large Shtokman development in the Barents Sea, with of course the American interest having long been established via the BP development of the big Prudhoe Bay field on the northern edge of Alaska.

But what lies beyond, nearer to the polar heart of the Arctic’s icy and forbidding wastes? Estimates vary wildly. The most optimistic is that no less than 25 percent of the world’s yet-to-find oil and gas reserves (400 billion barrels of oil equivalent) lie beneath the ice. But that may be too hopeful. A more modest recent estimate is about half that (around 14 percent of world yet-to-find reserves) with about two-thirds of it in gas and the other third, or less, in liquid resources.

But we are getting here into guesswork, although of an informed kind. The much more immediate question is cost. What might be the break-even price of extracting these reserves, or what is likely to be commercially feasible, whether now, with crude at $100 plus, or in the years ahead?

The answers depend both on the limits of current technology and now on global warming. If the Arctic ice cap is going to shrink fast then, whatever the other downside consequences, the accessibility of hydrocarbon reserves is made significantly easier and cheaper. If liquids can be brought out at less than $40 a barrel, that makes them not only comfortably profitable in world markets but also just about competitive against alternatives like Canadian tar sands, Venezuelan heavy oil (also $40), or some of the oil being squeezed from the dregs of older wells via “enhanced-recovery techniques,” which can cost up to $50.

In short, while past estimates may have been inflated, and while the very highest environmental standards will need to be met at every stage to safeguard Arctic wildlife, the economics are beginning to give a wavering green light.

If crude oil prices stay near the present range, if world oil thirst grows as predicted and if the Middle East gets even more dangerous and less inviting, the attraction of Arctic energy could radically alter the pattern of global energy resources and, consequently, geopolitics.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords.

Arctic warming could result in armed conflict: naval expert; Melting of passageway means countries will vie to control it, former coast guard official says.

Peter O’Neil, The Ottawa Citizen, Friday, February 29, 2008, From Paris.

The fast-warming Arctic’s vast economic potential makes it increasingly prone to smuggling, perilous polar tourism, environmental catastrophes and even armed conflict unless Canada and the U.S. lead efforts to bring order to the region, according to a new analysis.

Former U.S. Coast Guard Lt.-Cmdr. Scott Borgerson, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, argued Washington has to start with a Canada-U.S. agreement on how the Arctic should be regulated as global warming opens northern sea lanes. He also called on U.S. leaders to take seriously Canada’s sovereignty claims over the Northwest Passage, as well as consider a way to resolve competing claims involving Russia, Denmark and Norway.

“The United States should not underestimate Canadian passions on this issue,” wrote Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson, a fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations.
He cited ongoing Canadian “sabre-rattling” and noted that Canada is among several countries bulking up their military and surveillance capabilities in the North in anticipation of expanded shipping and energy exploration activity.
“There are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region,” stated the magazine’s summary of Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson’s analysis, called Arctic Meltdown: The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming.

“Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.”
Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson doesn’t specifically identify which countries would engage in battle, though he noted Russia’s increasing assertiveness in claiming sovereignty of huge swaths of the region off its coast.

Territorial disputes and the lack of regulations pose “grave dangers” that could “eventually lead to … armed brinkmanship” involving not only the countries staking claims, but also energy-hungry newcomers like China eying the North, he wrote.
The U.S. has consistently rejected Canada’s claim of right of control over the Northwest Passage. It has also refused to ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea because the Senate views the treaty as an encroachment on U.S. sovereignty.
Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson said the U.S. government’s status outside the treaty restricts its ability to assert its own territorial claims off the Alaskan coast. He also asserted that the U.S. needs, as a first step, to strike an accord with Canada on regulating vessel and tanker traffic in the North.
Citing studies suggesting an ice-free Arctic in the summer as early as 2013, he said the U.S. should seek a broad treaty with all Arctic countries as well as a bilateral deal with Canada to manage and police shipping and Arctic activity, including tourism and environmental protection.

Among the concerns he cited:

- How to carve up the “the world’s longest uncharted and most geologically complex continental shelf among five states with competing claims.”

- How to regulate and protect a region facing an explosion of offshore oil and gas exploration and development. “Oil tankers present a particularly grave environmental threat, as illustrated by three recent oil spills in the much safer waters of the San Francisco Bay, the Black Sea, and the Yellow Sea.”

- How to clean up the hazard created by Russia’s dumping of 18 reactors, some still fully loaded with nuclear fuel, in the Arctic Ocean between 1958 and 1992.

- How to recognize the interests of one million indigenous people whose rights in areas such as the bowhead whale hunt, which could be jeopardized by an explosion of shipping activity by companies seeking to exploit far quicker sea routes than exist today from Asia to Europe through the Panama Canal.

======

Adds by Google that came along with the Ottawa Post article - Then why why should not Google also try to make money from the global misery like mostly everyone else is bound to do?:
(Yes - this is also freedom of speech and freedom of the press - the dissemination of venom that can make money for someone!)

Climate Change Conference
Learn the truth! Join hundreds
of skeptics on March 2-4, 2008.
 Global Warming Skeptic
Get free layman’s guide to flaws in
man-made global warming theory
 Tundra Polar Bear Tours
See Polar Bears from a tundra bus
then relax at our beautiful lodge.
  Permalink | Printer Friendly |  Email This Article
Posted in Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Reporting from Washington DC, Canada, Global Warming issues, Real World's News