Russia to file request with UN to extend Arctic boundary in spring
ST. PETERSBURG. Oct 29 (Interfax) - Russia will file a request with a UN commission to extend its Arctic borders in the spring, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi told reporters.
"We'll file the request with the UN in the spring of next year. We have big plans regarding the extension of Russia's borders in the Arctic," Donskoi said.
Donskoi met the research ship, the Akademik Fedorov, which has been conducting comprehensive surveys in the Arctic Ocean with a view to creating a geological and geophysical basis for assessing the hydrocarbons potential of the continental shelf beyond Russia's exclusive economic zone.
Donskoi said Russia has since 2005 organized expeditions to the Arctic with the same aims and that this expedition was the last in the series.
Asked how sure he was about Russia's ownership of the area researched, Donskoi said "I am sure that this is Russian shelf. Our task started getting reading 14 years ago. Then we were unable to prove that these parts of the shelf belong to the Russian mainland. But now there is new research and specialists are saying that Russia has all the necessary additional material proving that Lomonosov Ridge, Mendeleev Ridge and Podvodniki Basin belong to Russian territory," the minister said.
This request is not just a chance to grow in the Arctic by over 1 million square kilometers, he said. "Receiving UN approval will not only enable Russia to expand borders in the Arctic. It will provide the chance to look into the future in terms of the country's Arctic development strategy, because we predict rather considerable hydrocarbon reserves in this territory," he said.
Russia's request to expand borders in the Arctic will be the first of all the countries in this region, he said. "We started before anyone to work on this and then some colleagues followed suit."
According to international law, the North Pole and the surrounding region of the Arctic Ocean do not belong to any one country. However, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States have rights to a 370-km exclusive economic zone along their coastlines.
Following the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (which the United States has not signed), countries that have signed on to the convention have a ten-year period to make claims to expand the borders of their continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical miles of the original boundaries.
Canada, which ratified the convention in December 2003, submitted a partial application to the commission at the end of its time period to set the boundaries of its shelf on the Atlantic coast. In December 2013, Canada announced that it had submitted an application to the UN to extend the boundaries of its continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean by 1.2 million square km, including Lomonosov Ridge.
In the middle of March, the UN Commission unanimously approved Russia's application to recognize more than 50,000 square kilometres of the Sea of Okhotsk as part of the Russian continental shelf.
