Arctic seafloor claims
Arctic seafloor claims refer to the territorial disputes and resource competition among nations bordering the Arctic Ocean, specifically regarding the rights to exploit natural resources beneath the seafloor. As global warming has resulted in significant ice melt, previously inaccessible regions are now open for exploration, revealing vast reserves of fossil fuels and minerals. Estimates suggest that about one-quarter of the world's fossil fuel reserves lie beneath the Arctic seafloor, intensifying geopolitical tensions among the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides a legal framework for these claims, allowing countries to extend their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) based on geological evidence of continental shelf extensions. A key area of contention is the Lomonosov Ridge, which runs across the North Pole, where Russia has made claims that have been disputed by Canada and Denmark. The stakes are high, as successful claims could lead to increased access to valuable resources, but also raise concerns about environmental impacts and sustainability. As drilling and exploration become more feasible, the consequences of these claims may significantly affect regional dynamics and global climate change.
Arctic seafloor claims
Global warming has led to significant declines in Arctic Ocean ice coverage, allowing unprecedented access to seafloor resources. Estimates place approximately one-quarter of the world’s fossil fuel reserves beneath the Arctic seafloor, making seafloor competition a likely source of future geopolitical conflict.
Background
During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Arctic Ocean ice was in steady retreat. Ice thickness declined by 40 percent, and ice shrinkage freed over 2.6 million square kilometers of water along the ocean’s coastlines. Record rates of ice shrinkage in 2007 and 2008 opened the Northwest Passage to navigation for the first time in recorded history.
Loss of polar ice creates open water that absorbs light rather than reflecting it, reducing the Arctic albedo, delaying yearly ice formation, promoting early spring melt, and thinning the permanent ice shelf. While costly to the Arctic ecosystem, ice loss has allowed unprecedented access to researchers, shippers, and resource explorers from the five countries bordering Arctic waters: the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, and Danish Greenland.
Arctic Resources
Research conducted in the Arctic indicates the potential existence of 90 billion barrels of oil and 4.5 trillion cubic kilometers of natural gas buried beneath the seafloor. Most fuel deposits lie close to shore, where they are readily extractable using existing technologies. Placer deposits of diamonds and gold also lie close offshore. Farther from the coast can be found large deposits of oil shale, methyl hydrates, and coal-bed methane.
Current technologies do not allow extraction of these deposits, and some, such as methyl hydrate, remain unproven as a fuel resource. However, increasing global fuel demands will make even these deposits attractive to future exploitation. Moreover, the discovery of undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents in the deep Arctic in 2001 added precipitated deposits of gold, silver, and copper to the list of recoverable resources. The lure of seafloor wealth has stimulated intense competition among those countries wishing to establish Arctic seafloor claims.
Claiming the Seafloor
Territorial jurisdiction within Arctic waters has long been disputed. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—which was concluded in 1982 and entered into force in 1994—was designed specifically to address such disputed seafloor claims. Under UNCLOS, every country bordering an ocean or an inland sea is granted sovereign rights over natural resources within an extending outward from its coastline for 370 kilometers.
Most known Arctic resources lie within these EEZs, but the Arctic is a relatively shallow ocean, and resource deposits near the North Pole and the Gakkel Ridge, both considered international territory, have triggered competing claims under Article 76 of UNCLOS. Article 76 allows the extension of a country’s EEZ to up to 650 kilometers offshore. To claim this additional territory, the claimant must prove that the continental shelf lying beyond its established 370-kilometer zone is an extension of its already-claimed shelf zone. The new territory also must not include any area more than 185 kilometers beyond the point where the water’s depth reaches 2,500 meters. Article 76 could allow almost 90 percent of the Arctic seafloor to become part of the EEZs of the five bordering nations.
The Lomonosov Ridge
The Lomonosov Ridge, lying between Siberia and Greenland, parallels the Gakkel Ridge, passes through the geographic North Pole, and represents the primary legal battlefield for Article 76 claims. The Lomonosov Ridge has a complicated and unique geological history. Core sampling indicates that it split off of the Eurasian margin of the continental shelf along northern Scandinavia and Russia some 50 million years ago. Coring also indicates that the Arctic was at one time a swampy inland sea, bolstering the likelihood that the ridge and the ocean basin it created are rich in buried fossil fuel reserves. The promise of such riches led the Russia Federation in August, 2007, to claim a portion of the Lomonosov Ridge, the Alpha-Mendeleyev ridge system, as well as part of the Amerasian basin: The Russian submersible Mir-1 planted a flag 4 kilometers beneath the ice of the geographic North Pole, thereby symbolically claiming more than 1.2 million square kilometers of seafloor.
Under Article 76, such a claim is valid only if Russia can prove that the Lomonosov Ridge is currently a geological extension of its continental shelf. Though core samples indicate that the ridge originated from the Eurasian margin, faulting patterns near Siberia suggest that it has since become detached from the Siberian shelf. Russia’s first claim to the Lomonosov Ridge was rejected by UNCLOS in 2002 based on limited geological evidence.
Canada and Denmark maintain that Russia will be unable to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of its shelf. They have filed counterclaims of their own. The stakes are huge: Successful claimants stand greatly to increase their fuel reserves and to generate billions of dollars in revenue. So far, the United States, a nonsignatory to UNCLOS, has stayed out of the debate, but with the potential gains so high it is unlikely that it will remain on the sidelines.
Context
At one time, research in the Arctic Ocean was nearly impassible. Its 14-million-square-kilometer surface was covered by heavy pack ice almost year-round, making access—even with icebreakers—dangerous and of scant utility. Global warming has changed this situation dramatically. Ice thinning and ice-free periods in the Arctic have made both access and research easier, even though they come at the expense of the ocean and its inhabitants. Given the rate of ice melt and the lure of valuable natural resources, competition over seafloor claims is expected to be fierce.
Decisions made under Article 76 will be binding. Thus, once these decisions are made, the consequent redrawing of undersea maps will have profound effects on regional nationalism and access to resource wealth. Successful claimants will determine access, set the environmental rules governing exploration and exploitation, and control royalties and pricing. However, drilling, pipeline transport, and shipping will all remain dangerous even in an ice-free environment. Moreover, full exploitation of the fuel and mineral resources found in the Arctic seafloor could contribute to global warming, enhancing a warming feedback cycle that may further facilitate research and mining, but only at the expense of global sustainability.
Key Concepts
- albedo: the proportion of incident light reflected from a surface
- continental shelf: a submerged extension of a continental coastline, where the ocean is relatively shallow and the seafloor is built from terrestrial sediments
- Gakkel Ridge: an Arctic Ocean spreading zone that continues the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- Lomonosov Ridge: an 1,800-kilometer submerged ridge crossing the geographic North Pole from Russia to Greenland
- methyl hydrates: icelike substances formed under pressure beneath permafrost and Arctic Ocean sediments that trap gases such as methane within an ice lattice
- placer deposits: accumulations of minerals washed onto the continental shelf from river runoff
- United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: an international treaty that grants an exclusive economic zone to all countries bordering significant bodies of water
Bibliography
Breum, Martin. "Canada Extends Its Arctic Ocean Seabed Claims All the Way to Russian Waters." Arctic Today, 21 Dec. 2022, alaskabeacon.com/2023/12/28/u-s-preparing-to-claim-new-ocean-territory-off-arctic-alaska-and-in-central-bering-sea/. Accessed 20 Dec. 2024.
Cressey, Daniel. “The Next Land Rush.” Nature 451 (January 3, 2008): 12-15.
Funk, McKenzie. “Arctic Land Grab.” National Geographic, May, 2009, pp. 104-121.
Krajick, Kevin. “Race to Plumb the Frigid Depths.” Science 315 (March 16, 2007): 1525-1528.
Moore, T. C., et al. “Sedimentation and Subsidence History of the Lomonosov Ridge.” Proceedings of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program 302 (2006): 1-6.
Rosen, Yereth. "US Preparing to Claim New Ocean Territory off Arctic Alaska and in Central Bering Sea." Alaska Beacon, 28 Dec. 2023, alaskabeacon.com/2023/12/28/u-s-preparing-to-claim-new-ocean-territory-off-arctic-alaska-and-in-central-bering-sea/. Accessed 20 Dec. 2024.