Who Owns the Arctic?

Russia, Canada neighbours? Seabed territorial push could bring borders together

Randy Boswell, PostMedia News, February 14, 2012

Two Canadian legal scholars have published a study showing how the push by northern nations for extended seabed territory in the Arctic Ocean could soon find Canada negotiating a maritime boundary with a new next-door neighbour: Russia.

Most of Canada's borderlands and boundary waters separate this country from the United States, including Alaska in the northwest corner of the continent. Canada also has maritime boundaries with Denmark (between Ellesmere Island and Greenland) and France, which oversees the tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon south of Newfoundland.

But the possibility that Canada and Russia might one day share a border has, until now, seemed unimaginable given the vast ocean distances separating the two countries, and the relatively modest 370-kilometre (200-nautical-mile) offshore zone within which nations are permitted to exercise exclusive jurisdiction and resource rights.

But a recently revealed oddity arising from a Beaufort Sea boundary dispute between Canada and the U.S. — along with the advent of a UN treaty allowing countries to claim ownership over extended continental shelves lying beyond the current 200-mile limit — has highlighted how Canada and Russia could be on a cartographic intercept course somewhere north of 80 degrees latitude.

The surprising scenario is laid out in a lengthy article published this month in the academic journal Ocean Development & International Law and co-authored by University of British Columbia geopolitics professor Michael Byers, a leading Canadian expert on Arctic sovereignty issues, and his PhD student, James Baker.

Peaceful competition on Arctic ice

Michael Byers, Toronto Star, 24 August 2011

AMUNDSEN GULF, N.W.T.—Two powerful icebreakers — one Canadian, the other American — have just met up in the Beaufort Sea, setting up the latest play in a circumpolar hockey game.

Together, the CCGS Louis S. St. Laurent and USCGC Healy will map the Alpha Ridge, a 2,000 kilometre-long range of underwater mountains running from the northwest flank of Canada’s Ellesmere Island toward Russia’s Wrangle Island.

Koreans Eye Mackenzie Valley Gas

Short on fuels, their LNG tankers are ready to fetch BC gas. Will they spark a latent NWT gas boom, too?

Liquified natural gas carrier: Korea planning icebreaking tankers.

Michael Byers, The Tyee, June 27, 2011

Among the denim-clad crowd at the Inuvik Petroleum Show, two well-dressed Koreans stand out like sore thumbs. Curious, I sit down with them at lunch.

"We're from Kogas," they say. "The Korea Gas Corporation." Why have they come here, to the Northwest Territories?

The Inuit prepare to defend their rights

The Economist, March 3, 2011

Ottawa - WHEN in the Arctic, you should at least treat your host well. Royal Dutch Shell, an oil giant, had to learn this the hard way when planning to drill exploration wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska a couple of years ago. The firm had spent $84m on offshore leases and had satisfied regulators. But it failed to win over the Inupiat, an Inuit group. They worried that icebreakers and drill ships would hurt the bowhead whales on which they depend. Their leaders and environmental groups sued American regulators for not following a 1970 law on environmental impacts. This allowed them to wrest a number of concessions from Shell, including a commitment to stop all offshore operations during the bowhead migration and hunt, should drilling ever proceed.

Dispute over Hans Island nears resolution. Now for the Beaufort Sea

John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail, January 27, 2011

Negotiators are now confident that Canada and Denmark will resolve their dispute over Hans Island, and sooner rather than later.

Relations between the two countries have grown irritable at times in recent years because of their competing claims to the barren bit of rock perched halfway between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Also in dispute is a patch of the Lincoln Sea even farther north.

But the two countries are in negotiations and have embarked on a joint mapping exercise, and both Canadian and Danish officials, speaking on background, said they were confident of reaching an agreement before Canada deposits its claim over the Arctic seabed to the United Nations in 2013.

Shared jurisdiction of the island is one possibility; another is running the border down the middle of the uninhabited, 1.3-square-kilometre knoll, which would give Canada a land border with Denmark.

As Arctic melts, U.S. ill equipped to tap resources

By Jacquelyn Ryan, Washington Post, January 10, 2011 

KODIAK, ALASKA - Flying over the Arctic Circle, the Coast Guard C130 rumbled as it alternated between 500 and 2,500 feet, its high-tech equipment quietly observing the thickness and stretch of ice along Alaska's northern border.

Cold air rushed through the open cargo door as some musk oxen and the occasional walrus passed below.

Like the rest of the 2.5-million-square-foot area at the top of the world, this chunk of the U.S. Arctic is melting quickly because of accelerated climate change. The prospect of newly thawed sea lanes and a freshly accessible, resource-rich seabed has nations jockeying for position. And government and military officials are concerned the United States is not moving quickly enough to protect American interests in this vulnerable and fast-changing region.

Shell Pushes Forward To Drill Well In Arctic

 

Jeff Brady/NPR

Shell's Nanuq was built especially for oil spill response cleanup in the Arctic Ocean. It can store 12,000 barrels of recovered oil. The 300-foot vessel is docked at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, for the winter.

 

Jeff Brady, National Public Radio, December 24, 2010

The Deepwater Horizon accident last April put a halt to offshore drilling — not just in the Gulf of Mexico but in Alaska, too. Despite that, Shell is pushing ahead with plans to drill an exploratory well in the Arctic Ocean, in the Beaufort Sea off the north coast of Alaska.

The company has spent more than $3.5 billion on federal leases and preparations to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. So far, that investment hasn't returned a single dollar.

Lawsuits by environmental groups and Alaska native communities forced the company to scale back drilling plans in the Chukchi. Now, Shell is focused on an exploratory well in the Beaufort. The company hopes to drill this summer after the ice clears.

Russia-Norway pact on Arctic zone puts pressure on Ottawa

As other countries sew up deals, Canada is seen as a laggard in jockeying for northern riches

Paul Koring, Globe and Mail, September 16, 2010

The race to carve up the Arctic’s increasingly exposed riches got hotter as Norway and Russia divvied up an oil-rich zone off their northern coasts, leaving Canada as the only country with a share of both the remaining unresolved boundary disputes.

Canada Burnishes Its Position as Arctic Power

As Northern Passageways Become Navigable and Mineral Wealth Beckons, 

Leaders Boost Claims With Expeditions, Sorties

Phred Dvorak, Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2010

The Canadian government on Monday announced that it had failed, in a small Arctic expedition it mounted last week, to find the remains of two British ships that disappeared more than 150 years ago seeking the fabled Northwest Passage.

The trip had more than historical relevance: It marked the latest move in a bigger geopolitical game—Canada's ambition to burnish its position as an Arctic power.

US-Canada Arctic border dispute key to maritime riches

The two countries have conducted previous joint surveys in the Arctic area

Sian Griffiths, BBC News, Ottawa, August 2, 1010

Canada and the United States are beginning a five-week joint Arctic survey, part of which will take place in a section of the energy-rich Beaufort Sea that is claimed by both countries.