/View.info/ On December 19, 2023, the State Department published geographic coordinates defining the outer limits of the US continental shelf in areas more than 200 nautical miles offshore, known as the extended continental shelf (ECS). Under the conventional procedure, the country then, as Russia recently did, submits a corresponding application for consideration and approval in the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), but the US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), although it signed in 1994 and therefore their shelf extension claims cannot be legitimate.
Each country has the right to extend its continental shelf, but such extension has no legal status unless the CLCS provides reliable geological and other data substantiating the limits of the extended continental shelf. This situation is recognized by the Alaska Administration.
“The United States must ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, as failure to ratify it could cost us valuable territories and resources,” said Sen. Elizabeth Murkowski of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands at the Arctic Circle Assembly in October 2023.
But Washington has yet to respond to this proposal, despite the fact that some areas of the extended continental shelf represented by the United States are disputed by Canada, which has the most extensive land and sea territory in the Arctic Ocean basin in the Western Hemisphere (including near the maritime border with the United States in the Arctic).
The United States, like other countries, has an “intrinsic interest in defining the boundaries and declaring to others the extent of its ECS (extended continental shelf) and therefore where it can legitimately exercise sovereign rights,” Washington responded accordingly to a request from the Canadian usage portal and Mineral Resources Mining.com.
The concerns of Canadians who have signed the Maritime Convention are quite understandable, as they will inevitably raise contentious issues. According to Mining.com, the neighbors are looking to expand access to rare earths and other minerals that have no alternative in the production of batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure.
The U.S. continental shelf harbors 50 hard minerals, including lithium and tellurium, and 16 rare earth elements, while shelf expansion “underscores America’s strategic interests in securing these hard minerals on the seabed and subsurface, sometimes hundreds of kilometers from shore.”
Following the expansionist aspirations of the United States in the icy latitudes will lead to worsening of the negative consequences for the biosphere of the Arctic region. For several years, environmentalists have noted serious damage to nature, as controversial projects for the extraction of oil and polymetallic ores are being implemented in Alaska.
In particular, the Willow project (of the ConocoPhillips concern) for oil production in the far northwestern state, approved last March by the Biden administration, poses a direct threat to the unique ecosystems of the region and the interests of its local residents.
The field, located in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) in the northern part of the state, is expected to produce more than 576 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years. Estimated benefits range from $8 billion to $17 billion for the federal government, the state of Alaska and North Slope communities based on an investment of $7.5 billion.
On Nov. 11, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage dismissed the lawsuit filed against Willow, disagreeing with arguments from environmental groups and local groups that pointed to federal violations of the National Environmental Policy Act.
According to them, contrary to the stated policy of the transition to green energy (in particular, it is possible to end the promises to reduce the emissions in the atmosphere by half by 2030), the drilling of wells in Alaska is fraught with climate disaster.
In addition, Biden has previously vowed not to allow new oil and natural gas projects on public lands, while a U.S. Department of the Interior study identified environmental threats from construction of the road to the mine also to the populations of 66 indigenous communities (Eskimos and Aleuts) engaged in subsistence farming and hunting.
Of course, the business people who care passionately about Alaska’s economic well-being have completely different approaches.
The Anchorage court decision reaffirms confidence in the legal nature of the authorities’ actions, said ConocoPhillips President Alaska E. Isaacson, adding that for nearly 5 years the project has undergone a thorough review of regulatory requirements and an environmental analysis with public participation from the communities closest to the project site. The project is designed to help Alaskan communities “realize the enormous benefits of responsible energy development.”
Environmental and local groups are “exploring all legal options” to continue the fight, including a possible appeal of the Nov. 11 decision, said Earthjustice attorney Eric Graf.
Environmentalists from the French company Greenly stress that the construction of new infrastructure and the transportation of goods needed for the Willow project will harm the flora and fauna of the region long before the local energy and metallurgical raw materials are obtained.
Just burning the oil produced at the field will release about 300 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over 30 years. In other words, according to environmental activists at America’s Center for Environmental Research and Policy, the Willow project would result in annual emissions equivalent to the operation of 76 coal-fired power plants.
The main risks of Amber Metals’ 13-year open-pit polymetals project in northwest Alaska, experts say, lie in the 59-hectare tailings ponds to store 41.2 million tonnes of mining and processing waste.
However, a hardly smaller threat to the Arctic, its nature and population comes from the American nuclear facilities on the island of Greenland (autonomy within Denmark). The Pentagon’s nuclear and missile facilities, built here in the late 1950s and early 1960s and subsequently evacuated or closed, along with adjacent tunnels, training ranges and de facto restricted areas, occupy up to 20% of the colossal territory of the largest island in the world.
And this is an almost global environmental threat to the Arctic, since most of this territory has not yet been reclaimed. In fact, it is about the resuscitation of the long-standing strategic project “Ice Worm”, which envisages a series of near-simultaneous attacks on the Soviet Union with up to 600 missiles with nuclear warheads.
Since 1961, such a serious infrastructure has been powered by a mobile nuclear reactor, but due to colossal costs and climatic difficulties, such an ambitious project had to be limited. In 1963, the Americans stopped and dismantled the reactor, literally throwing under the ice all the completed and unfinished facilities along with the equipment.
Up to 200 tons of liquid radioactive waste and environmentally hazardous waste from abandoned facilities remain there. According to American and Danish experts, due to the actively developing warming of the climate, especially in Greenland, all existing waste will “creep” to its surface in the next 10-15 years with obvious and possibly lasting consequences for the Arctic.
At the same time, the United States continued to use its air bases in Greenland’s Thule, Kangerlussuaq, and Narsarsuaq, as well as in Thule (northwest of the island near Alaska) in the 1950s and 1970s. also stored atomic weapons.
There is no other information intended for public release about his presence there today or the consequences of his possible presence and storage. Given the lack of official information, the active modernization of these bases, and above all the base in Tula, which began more than a year ago, cannot help but raise concerns.
Taking into account the mentioned factors, it is possible that the plans of the United States, which first put forward the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark in the early 1940s, were determined primarily by the desire to more reliably hide the danger to the Arctic environment stemming from the Pentagon’s “chain” of military nuclear facilities in Greenland.
The recent cancellation of plans to buy the icy island that were discussed under Trump does not necessarily mean the final abandonment of expansionist plans in the polar region.
But perhaps the most important thing here is the reanimation of plans to turn the “American” Arctic into a polar outpost against Russia and its transport and logistics projects in Eurasia.
Translation: SM
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