Eyeing undersea riches including gold, cobalt and manganese, resource-poor Japan is planning a large-scale survey project to stake its claim to continental shelves before a UN deadline expires in six years.
The government is reportedly planning to spend more than ¥10 billion yen (US$85 million) on the first year of the project, a collaborative effort involving Japan's coast guard and the ministries of energy and science.
A plan adopted on Tuesday budgets ¥10.4 billion yen (US$88 billion) -- half to go to Japan's coast guard -- for the first year of the project and calls for finishing the survey and related research by 2007, the Yomiuri newspaper said.
Officials declined to confirm that figure yesterday, saying it had not been finalized.
But Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration had previously described the project as a national priority and announced its intention to scale up current survey activities.
Under the 1983 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a coastal state may claim rights to the resources of a continental shelf beyond its 370km exclusive economic zone provided there is geographical or geological continuity of the seabed.
For Japan to stake its claim, it must submit survey data for approval to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf by May 2009.
Preliminary surveys by Japan's coast guard indicate the island nation could claim some 650,000km2 of continental shelves -- an area about 1.7 times its territory, Land Minister Chikage Ogi told a recent news conference.
The area is believed to contain deposits of gold, silver, cobalt, magnesium and natural gas potentially worth trillions of yen (billions of dollars), Ogi said.
"If these claims are recognized, our dream of becoming a resource-rich nation will no longer be just a dream," she said.
Like other nations, Japan is keen on securing the mining rights as a potential future resource, said Masaaki Sasaki, an official with the National Resources and Energy Agency.
But he admitted that it's unclear when it will be technically or economically feasible to exploit those claims, some of which include areas more than 3km underwater.
"It's not something that can be exploited in the near future, and nobody knows for sure how much of what is down there," Sasaki said. "The ocean is a big place."
Two Japanese coast guard vessels have been surveying continental shelves around Japan for the last 20 years, covering a distance equivalent to 18 trips around the world.
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