It’s now a three-way battle for ownership of the North Pole, as Denmark revealed it will take on Canada and Russia amid claims its Greenland territory is connected to the pole via a ridge beneath the Arctic Ocean.
Huge, sparsely populated Greenland is semi-autonomous Danish territory and its continental shelf is linked to the pole by the 1,800km-long Lomonosov Ridge, which runs beneath the Arctic Ocean.
Foreign minister Martin Lidegaard will today deliver a claim to a United Nations panel in New York, as Denmark becomes the latest country to make a play for the vast untapped oil and gas reserves thought to lie beneath the ice.
The Lomonosov Ridge (shown in dark blue) links Greenland’s continental shelf with the North Pole. The red dotted line shows the extent of the five Arctic countries’ claims on the region under existing international law, which allows them to claim ownership of land up to 200 miles from their northern borders.
The five Arctic countries — the United States, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark — all have areas surrounding the North Pole, but only Canada and Russia had indicated an interest in it before Denmark’s claim.
In 2008, the five pledged that control of the North Pole region would be decided in an orderly settlement within the framework of the UN, and possible overlapping claims would be dealt with bilaterally.
Under international law, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US – the five countries with territories near the Arctic Circle – are allotted 200 nautical miles of territory stretching from their northern coasts.
However, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, exclusive claims can be vastly expanded for countries that can prove their part of the continental shelf extends beyond that zone.
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