Thread: Arctic Oil Scramble

Originally Posted by dalem

Holy Cats but I'm sick of the gorram Russkies and their gorram inferiority-complex-driven craziness.

-dale

Don't worry. They'll eventually be bought out by the Chinese, and we'll ally with the Chinese Empire to conquer the stars.

It's a scientific expedition. But yeah, the press loves giving everything a political color, and then you have people "sick" of it.

Smart move for Russia considering the amount of oil they have yet-to-be-drilled in the arctic region. If Russia wants the North Pole, they can have it, but Santa's toys are still gunna be coming out of China's workshop.

Not the entire arctic. just a large shelf that supposedly extends from continental Siberia, which is grounds for it being labeled Russian territory (in theory). Heres an interesting link I found. What I'm not sure about is the accuracy of the maps. it seems like Russia would get less under it's own proposal that under the Canada/Denmark one.

Russia’s Arctic Claim at ComingAnarchy.com

EDIT:

MOSCOW yesterday fired the starting gun on the world's last colonial scramble when a manned submersible planted a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The rust-proof titanium flag was planted on the seabed 4261 metres under the surface of the Arctic Ocean, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Vladimir Strugatsky, vice-president of Russia's polar exploration association, as saying on board a support vessel.

Russia wants to extend the territory in the Arctic it controls right up to the North Pole. The region is believed to hold vast untapped oil and gas reserves.

Soviet and US nuclear submarines have often travelled under the polar icecap, but no one had so far reached the seabed under the Pole, where depths exceed 4000 metres.

Expedition leaders said their main worry was to resurface at the ice hole where they dived as the mini-submersibles are not strong enough to break through the North Pole's desolate icecap.

Two Russian ships had spent more than a week ploughing their way through deep ice towards the North Pole. In a nation that, in Soviet times, pioneered Arctic exploration, the expedition has fired the public's imagination.

"Our main aim is to remind the whole world that Russia is a great polar and scientific research power," the veteran Arctic explorer Artur Chilingarov, who is also a deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, had emailed from the expedition's research ship.

"You can understand that to touch the seabed at such depth is something like taking the first step on the moon."

But Mr Chilingarov also caused international concern after declaring that the Arctic and the North Pole were Russian.

Global warming has given renewed impetus to the race for control of the Arctic. Melting ice sheets could open up the fabled North-East Passage, the quest for which claimed countless sailors' lives, for the first time. The route, which could dramatically cut the length of a journey from Europe to Asia, could become navigable to commercial traffic within eight years.

There is another tantalising prospect. By some estimates, the Arctic holds a quarter of the world's untapped energy reserves - now more accessible than ever.

But some see the expedition as little more than a public relations stunt designed by the Kremlin to attract public support for Russia's long-held claim to a vast chunk of the Arctic - about half the size of Western Europe.

The Kremlin has long believed the territory belonged to Russia and it was marked as such on Soviet maps from the 1920s.

Russia stakes Arctic claim - World - smh.com.au

Canada to strengthen Arctic claim

As the race to back up claims over the resources of the Arctic Ocean heats up, Canada has said it will build two new military bases in its far north.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement during a tour of Canada's northern territories.

It comes as a Danish mission prepares to sail to the North Pole to map the seabed under the ice.

Last week, a Russian expedition planted the country's flag on the floor of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole.

'Use it or lose it'


Mr Harper said a cold-weather army training base would be set up at Resolute Bay and an existing port at a former mine at Nanisivik would be refurbished to supply Arctic patrol vessels.


See a detailed map of the region
He said the facilities would bolster Canada's claims to disputed portions of the Arctic.

"Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is use it or lose it," Mr Harper said from Resolute, a small Inuit community about 600km (372 miles) south of the North Pole.

"Today's announcements tell the world that Canada has real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."

Polar missions

Melting polar ice has led to competing claims over access to Arctic resources, including the Northwest Passage, a shipping channel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans currently blocked by ice during the winter months.

Mr Harper announced plans last month to build six naval vessels to patrol the passage.

Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway and the United States also have competing claims to the seabed below the North Pole, an area containing as much as 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas according to a US study.

The area is not currently regarded as part of any single country's territory and is governed instead by complex international agreements.

Last week a Russian expedition sent a mini-submarine to the ocean floor four kilometres (2.5 miles) below the North Pole to further Moscow's claim to the Arctic.

Moscow argues that waters off its northern coast extending to the North Pole belong to its maritime territory because an underwater feature, the Lomonosov Ridge, is an extension of its continental territory.

On Sunday, Denmark is sending a month-long expedition to the North Pole to study the same underwater ridge to see if it is connected to Greenland, a Danish territory.

The Danish team plans collect data to map the seabed.

Originally Posted by texacali

Fairly cost effective move for Putin. How many square miles are involved so far under Russia's claim?

Very cost effective indeed

Russian arctic images 'from Titanic'
By Natalie Paris and agencies
Last Updated: 10:26am BST 12/08/2007

Russia faces embarrassment over its flag planting expedition to the North Pole after claims that state broadcasters borrowed scenes from the movie Titanic to "beef-up" footage.

Television company Rossiya sent images of mini submarines descending to the ocean floor around the world in its report about the mission.

But a 13-year-old boy from Finland spotted the scenes in the national daily newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, and realised that they resembled images on his Titanic DVD.

He told the newspaper: "I checked it with my DVD and there it was right there in the beginning of the movie: exactly the same image of the submersibles approaching the ship."

Titanic, made by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, opens with pictures of divers inspecting the 1912 shipwreck.

The news programme is accused of merging real footage with the movie shots under the caption "northern Arctic Ocean", according to the Guardian.

It reported that Rossiya had refused to comment on the footage but said its Vesti news programme had originally been filmed using scale models in a studio.

The company is one of two state-controlled channels that have been turned into propaganda tools under President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has used Artur Chilingarov's controversial expedition, after which he declared the Arctic "forever Russian", to stir up national sentiment in support of Russia's claim to the land.

But his 14,000ft descent by submarine drew criticism from Canada and the United States who accused Russia of a crude attempt to grab the Arctic.

Canada's prime minister yesterday announced plans for an army training center and a deepwater port on the third day of an Arctic trip devised to assert sovereignty over the region's potentially vast energy resources.

Meanwhile the United States has launched an Arctic expedition of its own.

Scientists want to map the sea floor off Alaska, but deny that the US is actively joining the Arctic competition.

Russian arctic images 'from Titanic' - Telegraph