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 ...
They have no more clue how much oil might exist there than the man in the moon until they actually punch a few holes to prove it.
Please, have at it. Nobody in this county with the means is left to stand up and give it a try.
So how do Canada and Russia duke this one out. Russian roulette challenge between the prime minister of Canada and the president of Russia?
That would have Canada (population roughly 32 million) in control of the vast majority of the global population. Especially if: why stop at Eurasia? Africa is connected to Eurasia above sea level (so Canada would own the land that about 5.5 billion of the world 6.5 billion people live on).
Canada - GET ON THIS RIGHT NOW!
Russia has been acting loopy ever since Putin decided to crown himself dictator.
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