War at the Top of the World: The Battle for the Arctic Shelf

On August 4th, 2015, Russia submitted a claim to the the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, established by the Law of the Sea Convention, to over 463,000 square miles of seabed within its 44% sector of the Arctic Ocean. The claim included not only the already-acknowledged territorial waters which extend 12 nautical miles Northward from the Russian coastline and the Exclusive Economic Zone which extends 200 nautical miles toward the North Pole, but to a total area extending 350 nautical miles from land. The basis of the claim was that the portion of the Arctic Shelf which forms the seabed beneath the Russian sector, including the Lomonosov Ridge, was an extension of the Russian land mass itself. The value in increasing Russia's claim was not in the increased surface area but what lies beneath the seabed. The oil and natural gas deposits in the Arctic are estimated to represent 25% of the untapped reserves on the face of the planet. Those reserves are believed to amount to nearly 36 billion barrels of oil worth nearly $2 trillion at mid-2015 prices. The four other nations whose lands border the Arctic Ocean, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Norway and the United States, are expected to file objections to Russia's claim and submit claims of their own.