Tweet
02/08/2007 | Moscow News,â„–30 2007
U.S., Russia Race for Arctic Riches
> print version
MOSCOW (AFP) - Members of Russia's parliament in a mini-submarine planted their country's flag four kilometers (2.5 miles) below the North Pole at the climax of a mission to back up Russian claims to the region's mineral riches.
"The Mir-1 submarine successfully reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean... at a depth of 4,261 meters," (13,980 feet) veteran Arctic explorer and expedition leader Artur Chilingarov told the Vesti television channel.
A meter-high flag, made of titanium so as not to rust, was deposited on the seabed, the ITAR-TASS news agency cited an expedition official as saying.
Chilingarov was joined by fellow parliamentarian Vladimir Gruzdev and four others, three of whom followed in a second mini-submarine, which touched the seabed 4,302 meters below the surface, Vesti reported.
Billed as the first to reach the ocean floor under the North Pole, the expedition aims to establish that a section of seabed passing through the pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is in fact an extension of Russia's landmass.
"We must determine the border. The most northerly border of the Russian shelf," Chilingarov said in comments broadcast before the dive from the Akademik Fyodorov reÂsearch ship leading the expedition.
Speaking during a trip to the Philippines on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped the expedition "would provide additional scientific evidence for our aspirations," in comments broadcast on Vesti-24.
The Arctic and Antarctic Institute in Saint Petersburg said official confirmation of the descent would come only once the mini-submarines are back on board the Akademik Fyodorov.
The voyage reflects growing international interest in the Arctic partly due to climate change, which is causing greater melting of the ice and making the area more accessible for research and economic activity.
The U.S. Geological Survey, a U.S. government agency, said in a report earlier that some 25 percent of world oil reserves are believed to be located above the Arctic Circle.
In a speech on a nuclear ice-breaker earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin urged greater efforts to secure Russia's "strategic, economic, scientific and defence interests" in the region.
In 2001 Russia made a submission to a United Nations commission claiming sub-sea rights stretching to the pole. The current mission is looking for evidence to back up this claim.
The expedition comes as several countries try to extend their rights over sections of the Arctic Ocean floor. Both Norway and Denmark are carrying out surveys to this
end.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently called for measures to defend the country's interests in the Arctic, including by boosting the number of ice-breakers patrolling its sector.
U.S. politicians, including Senator Richard Lugar, have urged defence of their country's Arctic interests to stand up to Russian claims over large stretches of the seabed.
"Unless the United States ratifies the treaty, Moscow will be able to press its claims without an American at the table," Lugar said in May, referring to the Law of the Sea treaty.
Russian media reported a U.S. expedition that set off from Norway on July 1 to study another part of the Arctic seabed, the Gakkel Ridge, was part of a race between Moscow and Washington for the Arctic's mineral riches.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which was organising the voyage, said in an email to AFP that the "expedition is in search of hydrothermal vents and new biological life."
On Thursday a second Russian expedition was to be launched from the northern port of Arkhangelsk for a 100-day research mission to Russia's Arctic seas, the Arctic and Antarctic Institute said.
Russia claims Arctic seabed
Associated Press
Thursday, August 2, 2007 (Moscow)
The first of two Russian mini-submarines that traveled to the Arctic Ocean floor at the North Pole has returned to the surface, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The vice president of the Federation of Polar Explorers, Vladimir Strugatsky, said the Mir-1 mini-submarine has resurfaced safely after spending eight hours and 40 minutes under water, according to the news agency.
Expedition organizers said the greatest risk facing the six crew members, three on each vessel, was being trapped under the ice and running out of air. Each sub had a 72-hour air supply.
Strugatsky said the Mir-1 spent about 40 minutes near the surface before it found a patch of sea surface free of ice, the ITAR-Tass said.
''That was difficult,'' expedition leader Artur Chilingarov, who was aboard the Mir-1 three-person sub, told a cheering crowd of colleagues who welcomed the crew with a loud ''hurrah!'' after the mini-sub was raised to the Akademik Fedorov research ship.
In a perilous project mixing science, exploration and the scramble for potential oil and gas fields, crews of the Mir-1 and Mir-2 were engaged in what Russian authorities called the first dive to the ocean floor at Earth's northernmost point.
The crew of the Mir-1 dropped a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag on the bottom, symbolically claiming almost half of the planet's northern polar region for Moscow.
''It was so good down there,'' Chilingarov, 68, a famed polar scientist, said after coming back. ''If someone else goes down there in 100 or 1,000 years, he will see our Russian flag.''
The Mir-2's crew included Michael McDowell, an Australian described by the ITAR-Tass news agency as a polar explorer, and Frederik Paulsen, a Swedish pharmaceuticals millionaire described as a co-sponsor of the dive.
Russian scientists were to map part of the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile (1,995-kilometer) underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region.
The ridge was discovered by the Soviets in 1948 and named after a famed 18th-century Russian scientist, Mikhail Lomonosov.
Political wrangling
In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia's continental shelf under international law.
The UN rejected Moscow's application, citing lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009.
If recognized, the claim would give Russia control of more than 460,000 square miles (1.2 million square kilometers), representing almost half of the Arctic seabed.
Little is known about the ocean floor near the pole, but by some estimates it could contain vast oil and gas deposits.
The voyage has some scientific goals, including studies of the climate, geology and biology of the polar region.
But its chief aim appears to be to advance Russia's political and economic influence by strengthening its legal claims to the Arctic.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said during a visit to Manila that the expedition should substantiate Russia's claim that the Eurasian continental shelf extends to the North Pole.
''I think this expedition will supply additional scientific evidence for our aspirations,'' Lavrov said in televised remarks.
He said, though, that the issue of which nation holds what portion of the polar region ''will be resolved in strict compliance with international law.''
The US Senate has not yet ratified US accession to the Law of the Sea, which would give Washington a seat on the panel that would consider and eventually rule on the Russian claim.
Phillips, the spokeswoman for the US State Department, said the Bush administration would continue to press hard for ratification in order to give the United States a voice on the commission.
George Newton, former head of US Arctic Research Commission, called the Russian Arctic claim ''significant'' in an interview Wednesday on WAMU radio in Washington, DC.
''With this ability now to mount a more aggressive research program Russia has made efforts to confirm or get additional data that will enable them to resubmit the claim,'' he said.
The Russian expedition leader, Chilingarov, became a hero of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, after leading an expedition aboard a research vessel trapped in Antarctic sea ice.
He descended with two crewmates, Anatoly Sagalevich, the pilot, and Vladimir Gruzdev. Before the dive, Gruzdev joked about what the submarines might find on the seabed, Russia's Channel One reported.
''And what if we encounter Atlantis there?'' Gruzdev said. ''Nobody knows what is there. We must use the opportunity given to us 100 percent.''
The deepest dive on record, according to several sources, was by the bathyscaphe Trieste, which in January 1960 descended 10,915 meters (35,810 feet) into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific.
In the coming weeks, expedition researchers plan to set up an Arctic research camp near the pole, called a ''drift station'' because it will drift with the shifting ice pack in the polar sea, to carry out long-range climate studies.
The Akademik Fyodorov is expected to remain in the region until mid-September.
U.S., Russia Race for Arctic Riches
> print version
MOSCOW (AFP) - Members of Russia's parliament in a mini-submarine planted their country's flag four kilometers (2.5 miles) below the North Pole at the climax of a mission to back up Russian claims to the region's mineral riches.
"The Mir-1 submarine successfully reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean... at a depth of 4,261 meters," (13,980 feet) veteran Arctic explorer and expedition leader Artur Chilingarov told the Vesti television channel.
A meter-high flag, made of titanium so as not to rust, was deposited on the seabed, the ITAR-TASS news agency cited an expedition official as saying.
Chilingarov was joined by fellow parliamentarian Vladimir Gruzdev and four others, three of whom followed in a second mini-submarine, which touched the seabed 4,302 meters below the surface, Vesti reported.
Billed as the first to reach the ocean floor under the North Pole, the expedition aims to establish that a section of seabed passing through the pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is in fact an extension of Russia's landmass.
"We must determine the border. The most northerly border of the Russian shelf," Chilingarov said in comments broadcast before the dive from the Akademik Fyodorov reÂsearch ship leading the expedition.
Speaking during a trip to the Philippines on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped the expedition "would provide additional scientific evidence for our aspirations," in comments broadcast on Vesti-24.
The Arctic and Antarctic Institute in Saint Petersburg said official confirmation of the descent would come only once the mini-submarines are back on board the Akademik Fyodorov.
The voyage reflects growing international interest in the Arctic partly due to climate change, which is causing greater melting of the ice and making the area more accessible for research and economic activity.
The U.S. Geological Survey, a U.S. government agency, said in a report earlier that some 25 percent of world oil reserves are believed to be located above the Arctic Circle.
In a speech on a nuclear ice-breaker earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin urged greater efforts to secure Russia's "strategic, economic, scientific and defence interests" in the region.
In 2001 Russia made a submission to a United Nations commission claiming sub-sea rights stretching to the pole. The current mission is looking for evidence to back up this claim.
The expedition comes as several countries try to extend their rights over sections of the Arctic Ocean floor. Both Norway and Denmark are carrying out surveys to this
end.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently called for measures to defend the country's interests in the Arctic, including by boosting the number of ice-breakers patrolling its sector.
U.S. politicians, including Senator Richard Lugar, have urged defence of their country's Arctic interests to stand up to Russian claims over large stretches of the seabed.
"Unless the United States ratifies the treaty, Moscow will be able to press its claims without an American at the table," Lugar said in May, referring to the Law of the Sea treaty.
Russian media reported a U.S. expedition that set off from Norway on July 1 to study another part of the Arctic seabed, the Gakkel Ridge, was part of a race between Moscow and Washington for the Arctic's mineral riches.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which was organising the voyage, said in an email to AFP that the "expedition is in search of hydrothermal vents and new biological life."
On Thursday a second Russian expedition was to be launched from the northern port of Arkhangelsk for a 100-day research mission to Russia's Arctic seas, the Arctic and Antarctic Institute said.
Russia claims Arctic seabed
Associated Press
Thursday, August 2, 2007 (Moscow)
The first of two Russian mini-submarines that traveled to the Arctic Ocean floor at the North Pole has returned to the surface, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The vice president of the Federation of Polar Explorers, Vladimir Strugatsky, said the Mir-1 mini-submarine has resurfaced safely after spending eight hours and 40 minutes under water, according to the news agency.
Expedition organizers said the greatest risk facing the six crew members, three on each vessel, was being trapped under the ice and running out of air. Each sub had a 72-hour air supply.
Strugatsky said the Mir-1 spent about 40 minutes near the surface before it found a patch of sea surface free of ice, the ITAR-Tass said.
''That was difficult,'' expedition leader Artur Chilingarov, who was aboard the Mir-1 three-person sub, told a cheering crowd of colleagues who welcomed the crew with a loud ''hurrah!'' after the mini-sub was raised to the Akademik Fedorov research ship.
In a perilous project mixing science, exploration and the scramble for potential oil and gas fields, crews of the Mir-1 and Mir-2 were engaged in what Russian authorities called the first dive to the ocean floor at Earth's northernmost point.
The crew of the Mir-1 dropped a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag on the bottom, symbolically claiming almost half of the planet's northern polar region for Moscow.
''It was so good down there,'' Chilingarov, 68, a famed polar scientist, said after coming back. ''If someone else goes down there in 100 or 1,000 years, he will see our Russian flag.''
The Mir-2's crew included Michael McDowell, an Australian described by the ITAR-Tass news agency as a polar explorer, and Frederik Paulsen, a Swedish pharmaceuticals millionaire described as a co-sponsor of the dive.
Russian scientists were to map part of the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile (1,995-kilometer) underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region.
The ridge was discovered by the Soviets in 1948 and named after a famed 18th-century Russian scientist, Mikhail Lomonosov.
Political wrangling
In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia's continental shelf under international law.
The UN rejected Moscow's application, citing lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009.
If recognized, the claim would give Russia control of more than 460,000 square miles (1.2 million square kilometers), representing almost half of the Arctic seabed.
Little is known about the ocean floor near the pole, but by some estimates it could contain vast oil and gas deposits.
The voyage has some scientific goals, including studies of the climate, geology and biology of the polar region.
But its chief aim appears to be to advance Russia's political and economic influence by strengthening its legal claims to the Arctic.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said during a visit to Manila that the expedition should substantiate Russia's claim that the Eurasian continental shelf extends to the North Pole.
''I think this expedition will supply additional scientific evidence for our aspirations,'' Lavrov said in televised remarks.
He said, though, that the issue of which nation holds what portion of the polar region ''will be resolved in strict compliance with international law.''
The US Senate has not yet ratified US accession to the Law of the Sea, which would give Washington a seat on the panel that would consider and eventually rule on the Russian claim.
Phillips, the spokeswoman for the US State Department, said the Bush administration would continue to press hard for ratification in order to give the United States a voice on the commission.
George Newton, former head of US Arctic Research Commission, called the Russian Arctic claim ''significant'' in an interview Wednesday on WAMU radio in Washington, DC.
''With this ability now to mount a more aggressive research program Russia has made efforts to confirm or get additional data that will enable them to resubmit the claim,'' he said.
The Russian expedition leader, Chilingarov, became a hero of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, after leading an expedition aboard a research vessel trapped in Antarctic sea ice.
He descended with two crewmates, Anatoly Sagalevich, the pilot, and Vladimir Gruzdev. Before the dive, Gruzdev joked about what the submarines might find on the seabed, Russia's Channel One reported.
''And what if we encounter Atlantis there?'' Gruzdev said. ''Nobody knows what is there. We must use the opportunity given to us 100 percent.''
The deepest dive on record, according to several sources, was by the bathyscaphe Trieste, which in January 1960 descended 10,915 meters (35,810 feet) into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific.
In the coming weeks, expedition researchers plan to set up an Arctic research camp near the pole, called a ''drift station'' because it will drift with the shifting ice pack in the polar sea, to carry out long-range climate studies.
The Akademik Fyodorov is expected to remain in the region until mid-September.