Staking Canada's Arctic claim
Billions of barrels of oil potentially at stake in coming circumpolar land grab
canada.com
Randy Boswell and Andrew Mayeda, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008
Next week, in the remote waters of the Beaufort Sea some 400 kilometres north of the Yukon-Alaska border, a team of Canadian government scientists aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent will embark on this country's latest mission to assert sovereignty in the Arctic.
For 42 days, the ship will move lawn mower-like through the ocean, making straight-line runs back and forth across Canada's polar backyard as a raft of pricey instruments being towed behind scans the sea floor to create a profile of its composition and contours.
It's all part of this country's effort to demonstrate, under the terms of a UN treaty, that Canada's offshore boundaries should be extended beyond the traditional 370-kilometre coastal economic zone to include "natural prolongations" of our continental shelf -- in the Beaufort Sea and in two other distant Arctic domains north of Ellesmere Island.
"For everybody who is participating, it's a very important job," says Dr. Jacob Verhoef, the Halifax-based federal scientist leading Canada's seabed mapping project. "Most of the time with scientific work you see an end product that is maybe a scientific paper. But you don't see an end product like we see now -- hopefully a new line on the map."
At a time when the world's attention has been seized by the idea that a new kind of Cold War has broken out between northern nations, it may come as a surprise that Canada's front line in the coming Arctic land grab and "Polar oil rush" consists of a few dozen geologists and hydrographers probing the murky depths of the country's long-overlooked third ocean.
The only thing that will go boom on the unarmed ship carrying Canada's battalion of scientists northward is the array of seismic air guns they'll use to bounce sound pulses off the seabed.
NATIONS COOL THE RHETORIC
And when the massive U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy approaches the Louis S. St-Laurent a few weeks from now in the northern Beaufort, it won't be to threaten the smaller Canadian ship but to clear a path for it through thick ice expected at higher latitudes. The neighbourly gesture -- to be made in return for Canadian survey help on a potential U.S. claim -- may well herald a new, friendlier phase in the circumpolar fight for territory and resources across the rapidly melting region.
A year after a team of Russian scientists provoked outrage in Canada, Denmark and other countries by planting a flag on the North Pole sea floor -- a widely condemned stunt that only amplified global anxiety over last summer's unprecedented polar meltdown -- the five nations with Arctic Ocean coastlines have agreed to cool the rhetoric and let science sort out who gets what from the Arctic's seabed treasure chest.
The polar detente -- formalized at a Greenland summit in May attended by top government officials from Denmark, Canada, Russia, Norway and the U.S. -- was welcomed by Arctic specialist Whitney Lackenbauer, a historian at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ont., who recently authored a study on Canada's Arctic policy for the Canadian International Council.
"We want to have capabilities to deal with potential threats," says Lackenbauer. "But we're certainly not going to arbitrate some sort of solution related to the extended continental shelf using patrol vessels. To even set it up like we're responding to the Russians, to me, is missing the point. The science has to come first."
All smiles and handshakes, the Greenland delegates signed a polar peace pact -- the Ilulissat Declaration -- vowing to follow strict UN rules for dividing sea-floor territory and resources in the Arctic, and to cooperate on environmental regulation, security, transportation, tourism, scientific research and search-and-rescue regimes throughout the north.
Smiles, handshakes -- and the occasional wink. For all of the genuine pledges to work together on balancing the exploitation and preservation of a warmed-up circumpolar world, the Arctic Ocean 5 all harbour suspicions of their neighbours' intentions and nurture their own national dreams about deep-sea riches north of 70.
A report released last month by the U.S. Geological Survey has made it clear that the potential spoils are huge: an estimated Arctic storehouse of 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- nearly one-quarter of the world's untapped hydrocarbon reserves.
VAST UNTAPPED RESOURCES
The fuel-drenched Arctic continental shelves, the report concluded, "may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth."
Verhoef acknowledges that science will only go so far in resolving the Arctic's undersea boundaries. The extent to which Canada and each of the other polar nations push their claims -- even if the geology supports them -- will be subject to "political realities and ramifications," he has stated.
Would Canada seriously press a seabed claim on the Russian side of the North Pole if our science supported such a move? Would Canada welcome a Russian claim on this side of the pole if their science backed it up?
And then there are questions of Arctic jurisdiction that science will never solve. Canada, for example, is convinced that the Northwest Passage -- the fabled shipping route through our Arctic islands -- lies within this country's "internal waters." The rest of the world -- most notably the United States -- considers it an international strait, unfettered by any transit restrictions that might be imposed by Canada.
Just this month, there have been several notable developments signalling, on one hand, the ongoing international tension in the Arctic and, on the other, an emerging spirit of cooperation among some polar nations.
The top U.S. Coast Guard officer, eager to increase the resources he has available for Arctic patrols, revealed plans for a realignment of United States policy in the Arctic from a focus on polar science to "sovereignty" and "security presence." Admiral Thad Allen has also publicly lamented the head start Russia's robust fleet of icebreakers is giving that country over the U.S. in asserting its presence and power in the polar sea: "We are losing ground in the global competition," he said.
Who owns the North Pole?
Meanwhile, British researchers have released a new map of the Arctic Ocean illustrating the multitude of geopolitical flashpoints in the region, among them a long-running dispute between Canada and the U.S. over a sizeable swath of the Beaufort.
Also highlighted on the map was a possible three-way overlap as Canada, Denmark and Russia prepare to make claims along the undersea Lomonosov Ridge running past the North Pole.
Exactly whose pole it is remains an open question.
Yet, days ago, at a geological conference in Norway, Canadian and Danish researchers set aside their countries' clashing interests near the pole and their high-profile ownership dispute over Hans Island -- a rocky islet between Ellesmere Island and Greenland -- to jointly present evidence that the Lomonosov is linked to both of those lands. The findings should serve to constrain Russia's territorial ambitions along the ridge and bolster Canada's and Denmark's own claims for seabed extensions and resource rights in the region.
"The need to demonstrate our sovereignty in the Arctic has never been more important, which is why our government has made this research a top priority," Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn announced after a Canwest News Service report last week on Canada's Oslo presentation. "Our commitment to this initiative, as well as other investments in the North, is ultimately about turning potential into prosperity for this remarkable region and for our country as a whole."
New lines on the map?
In a fuel-starved world where energy policies and the price of gas could determine who becomes the next U.S. president -- and perhaps, when the time comes, the next Canadian prime minister -- Canada's bid to gain control over its share of the Arctic's undersea oilfields has been elevated from an obscure polar science project to a national mission of the highest priority.
Cue the brainy crew of the Louis S. St-Laurent, the scientific spearhead of Canada's quest to expand its Arctic seabed possessions by hundreds of thousands of square kilometres and, in the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, help secure this country's future as an "energy superpower."
The specific challenge, says Verhoef, is to prove that the floor of the Beaufort Sea is so thickly covered by sediment that it qualifies under UN Law of the Sea rules as a geological extension of mainland Canada, granting the country petroleum and other resource rights.
Canada's other planned claims -- along the Lomonosov and Alpha submarine ridges in the central Arctic Ocean -- are based on different UN criteria related to bedrock connections between the targeted seabed and Ellesmere Island.
This summer's mapping expedition, which is scheduled to end Oct. 2, will be followed by a third season of research in 2009. Canada's deadline for submitting evidence for territorial extensions is 2013, and future mapping missions are scheduled for the Lomonosov and Alpha ridges, as well.
"Hopefully next year we go further north -- until we run out of sediments or until we reach the area of the submarine mountain chains," says Verhoef. "This is a very clear way of measuring and defining those outer limits. Certainly for a country like Canada, this is a unique opportunity to get that line defined and to get that outer limit internationally recognized."
As the scientists aboard the Louis S. St-Laurent begin their seabed survey next week, they will witness a startling reminder of the urgency of the mission: ice-free waters throughout the southern reaches of the Beaufort Sea -- an "unprecedented" retreat in that area of the Arctic Ocean, according to the Canadian Ice Service.
It's part of an ice-loss trend that portends -- much sooner than later, many experts are now predicting -- reliably clear summer shipping routes and increased economic activity across a transformed Arctic realm, one with fresh perils and possibilities, as well as new lines on the map.
SPECIAL REPORT
Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears ready to catapult Arctic sovereignty on to his party's re-election agenda after a speech Thursday highlighted "the race to secure Arctic resources." In a four-part series beginning today, Canwest News Service looks at Canada's stake in the coming Arctic land grab and Polar oil rush. In a fuel-starved world, Canada's bid to gain control over its share of the Arctic's undersea oilfields has been elevated to a national mission of the highest priority. A special report in the coming days in The Sun and at vancouversun.com |
