Posted on 06/27/2007 8:19:22 PM PDT by Mount Athos
It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.
According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia's claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf.
Under international law, no country owns the North Pole. Instead, the five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts.
On Monday, however, a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage on a nuclear icebreaker. They had travelled to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia's remote and inhospitable eastern Arctic Ocean.
According to Russia's media, the geologists returned with the "sensational news" that the Lomonosov ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia's claim over the oil-and-gas rich triangle. The territory contained 10bn tonnes of gas and oil deposits, the scientists said.
Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper celebrated the discovery by printing a large map of the North Pole. It showed the new "addition" to Russia - the size of France, Germany and Italy combined - under a white, blue and red Russian flag.
[...]
"Frankly I think it's a little bit strange," Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. "Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
OH MONK I think they need looter guy
I like it!
if theres oil in the artic, then it suggest climate in that area used to be alot hotter than they are now.
This needs to be challenged!
Russians are acting like the thieves they are. They need to be confronted. Too bad Bush is such a pu**y.
Maybe some in the State Department will do something.
Not to worry, the Greenie Weenies in the U.S. and Europe will intervene with protests, parades and naked efforts which will drive the Russky’s back to Moscow. The media in America and Europe will aid this cause thereby creating pressure that Putin can’t withstand.
Sure!!!!
So Russia is now in charge of the Polar Bear problem?
Let them have it. At least they’ll do something with the oil and you know no liberal birkenstocker will be able to do a thing about it. If they were smart, they would stage a big oil spill just to scuttle ANWAR forever. I guess I shouldn’t give them any ideas.
Agreed.
The North Pole must have been tropical....lots of CO2 for the plants to grow. Toasty!
I’d say that a comet hit the earth and knocked it off it’s axis.
Yeah; the little Commies of Camp Swampy Foggy Bottom will send a note rejecting all claims to the territory...by the U.S.
Likely.
We might as well let them have it. That way, at least, oil will be extracted and put into circulation. If we get it, the US government will “preserve” it.
This really isn’t that bad. We’re not going to be able to claim it and at least the Russians will drill there.
Why shouldn't it have been? The present North Pole was somewhere near the equator, eons ago. IIRC.
Where the heck is Owl-gore and Jimmah?
They’re probably getting a cut from it.
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