Conflicting boundary claims for possession of the continental shelf are expected to generate fresh diplomatic unease
Owen Bowcott, guardian.co.uk 11 May 09;
An avalanche of last-minute claims for millions of square kilometres of the seabed is pouring in to a United Nations office in advance of an international deadline for demarcating possession of the ocean floor.
The UK is among countries racing to register submissions with the UN's Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf before 13 May in the hope of securing valuable oil, gas and mineral resources around the world.
In the past two weeks Ghana, Pakistan, Norway, South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, France, Vietnam, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya and others have delivered boxes of documents to the commission's premises in New York.
The hefty files of detailed paperwork – one Australian submission ran to 80 volumes – are the culmination of years of underwater exploration by each state, plotting submarine contours that mark the outer edges of the continental shelf.
The complex rules of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permit states to extend their control and exploitation of the seabed beyond the traditional 200 nautical mile limit and up to 350 nautical miles offshore.
The precise extent of each claim frequently involves establishing the foot of an underwater continental slope, thousands of feet down in the chilly, dark oceans – and then measuring 60 miles outward.
Some claims, usually the legacies of unresolved international conflicts, are mutually exclusive, generating fresh diplomatic unease along the fissure lines of ancient boundary disputes. Before Wednesday, the UK will present its claim for the seabed surrounding the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic.
The submission is bound to overlap with the Argentinian claim sent in last month which insisted that the waters and extended continental shelf around all those islands belonged to the government in Buenos Aires. The French have raised hackles by claiming the seabed near their Pacific island territories.
The 13 May deadline applies only to those states that were signatories of the original treaty ten years ago. Other states, which signed at a later date, have more time left to submit their claims.
The United States has still not ratified the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but the prospect of neighbouring countries such as Canada and Russia carving up the seabed for exploration is rapidly shifting opinion in Washington.
Greenpeace and other marine environmental groups have derided the process as a series of colonial land grabs. Britain will have submitted several major claims, all in the Atlantic, by the end of this week: around Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands and in the Hatton-Rockall Basin to the west of Scotland.
The UK has signalled its interest in the continental shelf that slopes away from the British Antarctic Territory. All territorial claims at the South Pole are, however, formally frozen by the Antarctic Treaty to which the UK is a signatory.
Britain, France, Spain and Ireland have also lodged a shared submission for a 31,000 square mile tract of the ocean floor on the edge of the Bay of Biscay.
World Seabed In Dispute At May 13 Claims Deadline
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 13 May 09;
OSLO - The world faces disputes over the seabed from the South China Sea to the North Pole at a May 13 UN deadline for claims meant as a milestone towards the final fixing of maritime boundaries.
Most coastal states have to define their continental shelves, areas of shallower water offshore, by Wednesday to a UN Commission that aims to set limits for national rights to everything from oil and gas to life on the ocean floor.
"This is the sweep after which the maritime limits should be fixed ... the final big adaptation of the world map," said Harald Brekke, a Norwegian official who is a vice-chair of the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
"We are seeing many overlapping submissions," he told Reuters of the deadline, set in 2004. Forty-eight nations have made full claims and dozens more have made preliminary submissions under the deadline.
Russia has made the most spectacular claim by using a mini-sub to plant a flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole in 2007, an area that Denmark also says it will also claim.
And submissions have highlighted territorial disputes between Japan and Russia in the Pacific, between China and neighbours over the South China Sea and between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
"China possesses indisputable sovereignty ... over the South China Sea islands and their near areas," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said of islands disputed with countries including Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Brekke said the commission cannot decide ownership of the seabed around disputed islands.
LIMITS
Under existing law, nations can exploit the seabed if their continental shelves extend beyond territorial seas stretching 200 nautical miles from the coast. But the exact limits have not been defined on the map -- until now.
So far, the UN Commission has approved large parts of claims by Russia, Brazil, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Mexico and a joint submission by European countries around the Bay of Biscay and the Celtic Sea.
The distant offshore seabed had long been viewed as of little commercial interest. But factors such as global warming that is melting the Arctic ice and better drilling technology are bringing change.
A rig owned by oil and gas drilling group Transocean holds the depth record for drilling in water 10,011 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico in 2003 -- the water under the North Pole, for instance, is 4,261 metres (13,980 ft) deep.
One of a new generation of rigs, capable of drilling in 12,000 feet of water has left a shipyard in South Korea for acceptance testing in the US Gulf of Mexico, said Guy Cantwell of Transocean in Houston.
Brekke said it would take years to resolve all claims, even those which do not overlap. Any country missing the deadline -- set as midnight in New York (0400 GMT Wednesday) -- risks losing the chance of UN endorsement.
The United States is among dozens of nations not bound by the May 13 deadline, since it has not ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea. President Barack Obama hopes to ratify.
About 50-60 developing nations, including many in Africa, have had help in making claims from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) with the Norwegian Grid-Arendal foundation, which sees it as a step towards safeguarding the oceans.
"The connections we make with these countries mean that UNEP may be able to help with marine management in future," Peter Prokosch, head of Grid-Arendal, told Reuters.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
