US mission to Arctic will lay claim to gas reserves

Canada and the US are teaming up to for a research mission to the Arctic continental shelf as part of their bid to lay claim to the vast oil and natural gas reserves believed to lie beneath the Arctic Ocean floor.


By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 1:09PM BST 13 Aug 2008

A US Coast Guard cutter will set out on Thursday on a three-week trip to map a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland, about 600 miles north of Alaska.

The cutter Healy will then launch again on September 6 accompanied by Canadian scientists aboard an icebreaker, who will conduct further tests to help identify the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska.

The US is attempting to prove the Alaskan continental shelf stretches far beyond the 200-mile limit where coastal countries have sovereign rights over natural resources.

The joint operation comes amid increasing international competition to tap the Arctic's unexplored energy stores, thought to include 90 billion barrels of oil, about 15 per cent of the world's undiscovered reserves, as well as a third of the world's undiscovered natural gas, according to the US Geological Survey.

The five countries that border the Arctic Ocean - Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US - dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters.

Russia has claimed 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters and in a move marking the escalating rivalry, planted its flag on the ocean floor of the North Pole last summer.

Recent record oil prices have fuelled the race to exploit the polar territory's energy sources while melting ice floes have helped research crews gain access to the region.

Healy's new mission represents the fourth year that the US has collected data to define the limits of its continental shelf in the Arctic.

The cutter will be charged with mapping the ocean floor while the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S St-Laurent will work to determine the thickness of sediment to help calculate the extent of the shelf.

The collaboration would "assist both countries in defining the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean," the US State Department said in a statement.

Canada has until the end of that year to submit data on the extent of its continental shelf to the United Nations.

The study was announced days after Canadian representatives presented findings from a joint Canadian-Danish survey in the eastern Arctic as part of Ottawa's intent to extend Canada's territory beyond the current 200 nautical miles, adding an additional 676,000 square miles.

The joint research challenges Russian claims to a vast portion of the Arctic by claiming the undersea Lomonosov Ridge is attached to the North American and Greenland plates. Russia has sought to prove the ridge is an extension of its territory.

According to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, coastal states can claim territory 200 nautical miles from their shoreline and exploit the natural resources within that zone.

Margaret Hays, director of the oceanic affairs office at the US State Department, said the US/Canada mission would explore "places nobody's gone before". She told Reuters the Alaskan continental shelf could lie up to 600 nautical miles from the coastline and that data collected on the mission could provide information to the public about future oil and natural gas sources for the US.