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Canada gets serious about Arctic

Canada is stepping up its efforts to stake a claim in the oil-rich Arctic Ocean basin that receding ice sheets are opening up to exploitation, in a race for natural resources that has Russia way out in front.

A Canadian icebreaker this week will begin a scientific data-gathering mission in the polar region to bolster Canada’s claims over the potentially oil-rich zone.

The Canadian Coast Guard’s Louis S. St.-Laurent will rendezvous with the US Coast Guard Healy in the Beaufort Sea, north of Canada and Alaska, on or about Sept. 8 for the three-week joint operation.

The joint survey will use seismic readings to map the undersea polar continental shelf in the western Arctic, said Jacob Verhoef, director of Canada’s UN Law of the Sea program at the Department of Natural Resources.

The mission’s goals are not purely scientific. The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic region contains 90 billion barrels of oil waiting to be explored and even more natural gas — or 13 percent of all untapped oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas deposits in the world.

Five countries that border the Arctic Ocean — Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US — dispute the sovereignty of the region’s waters and their bounty.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that any coastal state can claim an exclusive economic zone beyond the established 200 nautical miles (370km), if it can prove the territory is naturally connected to its continental shelf.

Interest in the economic exploitation of the Arctic has increased significantly in recent years as melting ice floes have eased access to the region’s rich oil and gas reserves.

Rob Huebert, associate professor in the political science department at the University of Calgary and an expert on the Arctic resources issue, said Russia has taken a commanding lead in the race for the undersea wealth. Last year, the Russians made their intentions quite clear by planting a small titanium flag on the sea floor at the North Pole, symbolically claiming the area.

“The Russians are definitely putting the biggest effort into the north,” Huebert said. “They built it up more, they’re further ahead on resource development ... and they also have the largest icebreaking fleet.”

“They’re ahead of the game on the submissions for the law of the sea” to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, he said.

Canada has until the end of 2013 to submit data on the extent of its continental shelf to the UN, and is trying to make up for lost ground, Huebert said.

Earlier this month, at the International Geological Congress in Oslo, Canada presented findings from a joint Canadian-Danish survey in the eastern Arctic asserting that the undersea Lomonosov Ridge is attached to the North American and Greenland plates.

The extension could add up to 1.75 million square kilometers — an area three times the size of France — directly challenging Russia’s claim to a vast portion of the Arctic.
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