Russia wants to ask the United Nations in 2012 to approve the change of borders in the Arctic, a region rich in oil reserves, announced today the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.
“I expect us for next year to send a scientifically founded request to the UN Commission on the extension of the borders of our continental shelf in the Arctic”, said Ivanov, quoted by Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.
The official in Moscow says that in the coming days a Russian scientific expedition will go to explore the Lomonosov and Mendeleev regions, and thus gather evidence to prove that these regions are extensions of the continental shelf of Russia.
Lomonosov is a seamount chain that extends from Greenland to Siberia. But Greenland and Canada also state that this area is an extension of their continental shelf.
The five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean (U.S., Russia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark/Greenland) are engaged for several years in a real race for territorial claims of an area that might contain 13 percent of oil resources unexplored yet in the world, and 30 percent of the gas resources.
Moscow has caused concern among these countries in 2007, when claimed its territorial rights in the North Pole area by placing, in a symbolic way, a Russian flag in a capsule on the bottom of the Arctic.