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Canadians Plan Robot Sub Missions To Aid Claim For Arctic
jbpisio writes with a link to this blog-post summary that the Canadian government has commissioned a pair of unmanned subs to explore the geology of two underwater Arctic mountain ranges; the subs' mission will be to provide evidence supporting Canada's claim to huge swaths of potentially petroleum-rich seabed areas. According to the linked article, "The submersibles, scheduled to be launched in 2010, would be sent on a series of 400-kilometer missions north and west of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost land mass and the country's gateway to the open Arctic Ocean — the scene of an international power struggle over undersea territory and petroleum resources believed to be worth trillions of dollars." At least five countries (besides Canada, these are the US, Russia, Denmark and Norway) would like a slice of those trillions.
So everyone is sending midget subs to the arctic in an attempt to gain some sort of rights to exploit the resources there. Is it only a matter of time before they start equiping them with torpedoes and try to sink each other? Last sub floating wins...like underwater robot wars.
Actually, now I think about it, no-one will get hurt and this is starting to sound like fun!
Smivs on the intertubes!
The idea is that once the ice has melted it will be cheaper to get to the fuel/resources there.
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All that oil and only a few bears, seals and Inuit to complain. It looks like sooner, rather than later, we'll hear Mother Nature squealing "Oh my God! Nobody's ever put it THERE before!"
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
We're sending her up there, and she'll just claim the whole lot using her sense of geography and nationalism to claim the whole lot. She becomes a national hero to a nation more interested in oil than logic, and she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012, reminding voters that she takes those nucular codes very serious.
This is my sig.
Sooner or later it will be worth it, and so it makes sense to stake the claims now.
The area in question is VERY unlikely to be explored for petroleum, let alone developed, for decades. And there may be nothing there.
The real issue is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows countries to claim exclusive mineral rights beyond the current 200 nautical mile limit, out to the edge of the continental margin (which the treaty calls the "continental shelf", but it's not the same as the usual definition of that term). In some places this can be a significant chunk of territory. However, to establish the claim you have to define the geological boundary between continental crust and ocean crust, and there is a limited time to do so after ratification of the treaty (10 years). In Canada's case, the treaty was ratified in 2003. Canada therefore has to submit the claim to the responsible UN commission by 2013. In the part of the Arctic Ocean that is close to Canada, there is a large area (e.g., the Alpha Ridge) that is shallow enough that it could be claimed (the white line in the picture in the above link), if it is shown to be continental material. Unfortunately there isn't much known about that area, because the Arctic Ocean is one of the least-understood ocean basins. Hence there is a strong motivation to find out more about it, and sooner than 2013. With sea ice covering most of the area most of the year, it makes sense to use subs to survey it.
It isn't so much a "power struggle" as a 10-year window to define a geological boundary in order to make an exclusive claim in the area, under international law. After that, the 200 nautical mile limit becomes the permanent boundary. Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway have ratified the treaty, so they're in the running with Canada. The U.S. isn't, because it hasn't ratified, but it doesn't have much to gain in the Arctic (the continental margin in Alaska is narrow). As a sign that it isn't really much of a "power struggle", Canada, Russia, and Denmark have all run joint scientific expeditions to the area to study the sea floor geology in the last several years.
As far as building oil rigs, I doubt any one is going to make any money off it while oil is under $100 a barrel, unless, of course, governments pays for the projects outright with little hope of return. About the only country with that kind of cash and that kind of political system is Russia. The US, or course, is broke, and the US oil companies are clearly not interested in difficult projects, as they hardly explore the oil fields they have. In any case the future is renewable energy, and investing in oil is throwing good money after bad, as is shown with multitrillions of dollars thrown away in Iraq while Afghanistan is left to harbor enemies.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This could get very ugly.
The law of the sea supposedly governs this kind of thing. Determining the extent of the continental shelf can extend the exclusive national right for minerals up to 150 nm past the EEZ, so in theory the documentation of the shelf should be a benign action. But ultimately international law is enforced by warfare on various scales of intensity, starting at diplomatic sanctions, through economic sanctions, and all the way up as high as warfare can go.
International law is only what you can force a country to accept as international law. We know Russia wants to claim these resources, and gainsaying them can lead to armed conflict.
Back in 1991, I remarked that the course of the twenty first century would be determined by the integration of the former Soviet states into the world political, security and economic systems. The opportunity to do this, if it ever existed, was bungled by the first Bush administration, and now we are dealing with a militarily powerful, mineral rich nation with a paranoid persecution complex and authoritarian instincts. Do they have more invested in stability than they can get out of grabbing territory?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Two articles, 50 posts, and nary a mention of the total gibbering insanity of this move.
Our species is burning oil at such a rate that it's actually causing the polar ice caps to melt. Instead of turning around and thinking about just what the hell we're doing to ourselves we actually use this as an excuse to start a competition for oil rights under the ice that we're about to melt. Just take a step back and think about that for a minute, the lunacy of it just absolutely blows my mind.
This is like a crack addict scraping the dead tissue out of their lungs and putting that shit back into their pipe and smoking it. Doesn't there come a point at which people think our energy consumption might be costing us too fucking much and we need to just cut down a tad? Seriously, if this talk about drilling for oil in the Arctic isn't meant as a joke then satire is dead, and our species is headed the same way.
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