Slashdot Mirror
Russia Claims Large Chunk of North Pole
kungfoofairy writes "Russia has laid claim to over one million square kilometers of the Artic. This announcement comes on the return of a scientific expedition into the region which found that the Lomonosov Ridge connects to Russia. The area is supposed to have a reserve of 10 billion tons of natural gas and oil. 'A BBC map shows Russia's proposal; this set of maps from The New York Times illustrates the area at stake and different ways it might be divided ... The Russians have tried to advance their claim before, and were turned away by the United Nations in 2001. The new geological data is evidently meant to improve the odds for a second try. '"
Countries that would get most by method one:
We like method 1!
Countries that would get most by method two:
No, method 2 is better!
Repeat every 6 years until the whole thing melts and/or people realise that country borders are arbitrary and their first responsibility should be to the human race.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
And here I thought the North Pole was a single infinitely small point.
Why do people mod things up just because they're anti-US?
Most of the world's major maritime powers agree with the US position that this is an international strait. If anything, it's Canada here that is acting unilaterally.
Although the OP is correct; the Canadians who depend on the US for their defense do not have the means to defend their claim even if they wanted to. That's reality for you I guess.
Oh, give me a break. While this tactic may work in some cases, there's no escaping the fact that oil is a finite resource, and that at some point, your oil field will be empty.
There's nothing sinister about stopping production before you've exhausted an oil field, either. At some point, it simply gets too expensive to recover the remaining oil, because of contaminants leaking into the field, or because the remaining oil is too thick/viscous to be pumped up without heating it first, etc. As the price of oil rises, restarting production may become economically viable again. We're seeing this happen at a local oil field (Schoonebeek), btw. Production stopped in 1996, when about 25% of the known contents of the field were pumped out. They're considering restarting production now, and expect to recover another 15% (150 million barrels).