The Foreign Ministry said on August 4 that Moscow is claiming 1.2 million square kilometers of the Arctic sea shelf.
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“The Russian bid covers underwater area of some 1.2 million square km extending for more than 350 nautical miles from the coast”, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
All five nations have been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.
The claims are aimed at a section of the Arctic Ocean known as the doughnut hole, a Texas-size area of worldwide waters encircled by the existing economic-zone boundaries of shoreline countries.
Since 2001, Russian Federation has been claiming a hydrocarbon-rich shelf land, including the Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges, but its first application was rejected in 2002 due to a lack of geological evidence.
“Submitting the claim to the commission is an important step in formulating Russia’s right to the Arctic Shelf in accordance with the United Nations convention on the Law of the Sea”.
Russia made a symbolic claim to part of the territory in 2007 by dropping a canister containing a Russian flag on to the ocean floor from a submarine in the North Pole.
The assertion stated Russian Federation expects the U.N.to start contemplating its declare at a fall assembly of the United Nations Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
The ministry said the resubmitted bid contains new arguments.
Environmental groups are warning against a rush to develop the Arctic shipping route and extract the energy resources under the sea bed. “Until we act collectively, this area might be dotted with oil wells and fishing fleets inside our lifetimes”.
Among tensions over the Ukraine crisis and with neighbours in the Baltic, Vladimir Putin has also moved to increase his military presence in the Arctic.
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Earlier this year, the military conducted sweeping manoeuvres in the Arctic that involved 38,000 servicemen, over 50 surface ships and submarines, and 110 aircraft.
