CHINA heading to the Arctic

Russia's claim to the north pole.

The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf has declared that the outer limits of the Russian continental shelf submission are geologically similar to “the structure of the continuation of the shelf and the continent of the Russian Federation,” according to Yevgeny Kisselyov, head of the state agency in charge of natural resources exploitation, quoted by TASS news agency.

That’s one of the key scientific requirements for any country to able to claim an area of the world’s oceans as part of its extended continental shelf under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The Russian claim would include about 1.2 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean floor extending from the Russian Arctic coastline towards the North Pole.

However, experts warn that despite political spinning and media hype about the race for the Arctic riches, the scientific and diplomatic process of delineating the extended continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean will take years if not decades to settle.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/a...point-quest-extended-arctic-continental-shelf