International status of the Arctic
After winning the presidential election in November 2024, Donald Trump proposed that Canada become the 51st US state and again brought the acquisition of Greenland from Denmark to the fore. (In 2019, he already announced his intention to buy it). Political scientists note that the accession of Canada and Greenland, which have access to the Arctic Ocean basin, is part of a plan to expand the American presence in the Arctic.
Geography
The Arctic is the northern polar region of the Earth, including the outskirts of the continents of Eurasia and North America, the Arctic Ocean and adjacent parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Defining the border of the Arctic region is debatable. According to one approach, it runs along the southern boundary of the tundra zone, in which case its area is about 27 million square kilometers.
According to another approach, the region does not extend beyond the Arctic Circle (66°33′ N) and its area is 21 million square kilometers (about 6% of the Earth’s surface). A third of this territory is land, a third is the continental shelf and the rest is the ocean with depths over 500 meters.
Most of the ocean surface is covered by ice almost all year round. Five countries have access to the Arctic Ocean basin: Russia, Canada, the USA (Alaska), Norway and Denmark (thanks to the island of Greenland, which is part of Denmark). The total length of the Arctic coast of these countries is 38,700 km, of which Russia accounts for 22,600 km.
Arctic countries also include Iceland, which is located in close proximity to the Arctic Circle, as well as Sweden and Finland (significant territories of these countries lie within the Arctic Circle).
Oil and gas reserves
At present there is no scientifically substantiated data on hydrocarbon reserves in the Arctic. Experts assess all existing information on hydrocarbon reserves in this region as rather expected.
The most authoritative are the reports of the international consulting company Wood MacKenzie and the US Geological Survey, published in 2006 and 2008, respectively.
Wood MacKenzie estimated undiscovered oil and gas reserves in the region at 166 billion barrels of oil equivalent, and explored reserves at 233 billion barrels.
According to the US Geological Survey, the total undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Arctic region may reach 412 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which is 22% of the world’s total undiscovered hydrocarbon resources, including 90 billion barrels of oil (13% of the world’s undiscovered reserves), 48.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas (30% of the world’s undiscovered reserves), 44 billion barrels of gas condensate (20% of the world’s undiscovered reserves).
At the same time, 84% of the resources are located on the shelf of the Arctic Ocean and only 16% are on the land part of the Arctic states within the Arctic Circle.
The largest reserves of natural gas are concentrated in the Russian segment of the Arctic, and oil – in the American.
Other resources, transport routes
According to scientists, the Arctic contains a fifth of the world’s fresh water reserves. The continental part of the Arctic contains significant reserves of copper-nickel ores, tin, platinum group metals, agrochemical ores, gold, diamonds, tungsten, mercury, and ferrous metals.
In particular, the Arctic zone of Russia contains reserves of diamonds, gold, chromium and manganese, platinum group metals, etc. Gold, coal, and quartz are mined in Canada’s Yukon.
In Alaska, beyond the Arctic Circle, industrial-scale mining is carried out at the Red Dog open pit, the world’s largest in terms of zinc reserves.
In addition, gold is mined in Alaska, and there are also reserves of uranium, copper, nickel, and iron. Coal, marble, zinc, lead, and silver are mined in Greenland.
The gradual melting of ice, which is a result of global warming, opens up new opportunities for the development of Arctic territories and the active exploitation of their mineral resources.
In this context, the navigation potential of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), the shortest route from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region, and the Northwest Passage (NWP), connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the Western Hemisphere, are of particular importance.
Status of the Arctic
There is no single international document (similar to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959) that would establish the legal status of the Arctic territories. For a long time, the so-called sectoral principle of division was in effect in the Arctic.
Currently, the Arctic is subject to regulation by the Law of the Sea (Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982), numerous multilateral and bilateral agreements and declarations, as well as the national legislation of eight Arctic states.
Sectoral division of the Arctic in the 20th century
According to the sectoral principle, countries with access to the Arctic Ocean considered the meridians passing through the extreme points of their coasts and converging at the North Pole to be the boundaries of their polar possessions.
Accordingly, the Arctic states considered the territories within the “polar triangles” to be objects of their sovereign powers. Sectoral delimitation was laid down in the 19th century.
In particular, it was recorded in two conventions of the Russian Empire – in 1825 with United Kingdom on the delimitation of possessions in North America (between Alaska, which was part of Russia at the time, and Canada, which was a British colony) and in 1867, when Alaska became part of the United States.
In 1925, Canada, and in 1926, the USSR, confirmed this principle of dividing the Arctic by their legislative acts. Denmark, Norway and the United States did not adopt special acts on the Arctic regions adjacent to their territories, but the legislation of these countries on the continental shelf, economic and fishing zones extended to the Arctic regions as well.
Thus, the Arctic was effectively divided into five sectors of responsibility between the United States, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark.
The concept of Arctic sectors was predominant until the 1960s and 1970s, when practical exploration and development of natural resources in the region began and non-Arctic states also showed interest in the Arctic.
Convention on the Law of the Sea
The sectoral division of the Arctic was not confirmed in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which defined the boundaries of the maritime spaces in which coastal states have the right to exercise their sovereignty.
The Convention extends its effect to all maritime spaces; it does not contain any special rules that would apply specifically to the Arctic.
It established a 12-mile zone (22.2 km) as the limit of territorial waters and jurisdiction of coastal states over resources in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) within 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) from the baselines.
The width of the continental shelf was limited to 200 nautical miles. Territorial seas, EEZ and continental shelf are the areas where coastal states exercise their jurisdiction and exercise rights to resource extraction, fishing and other activities.
The Convention declared the remaining water area, seabed and subsoil to be an international zone, they are considered “the property of all mankind”. Fishing in these waters can be limited only by international treaties, and exploration and use of mineral resources in these areas is managed by the UN International Seabed Authority (an intergovernmental organization in which all parties to the Convention are represented).
There are 170 states parties to the Convention (as of January 2025), including all Arctic states except the United States.
Russia, which rejected the sectoral division of the Arctic, ratified the Convention in 1997, losing sovereignty over 1.7 million square kilometers of the Arctic Ocean as a result of joining it.
The right to expand the marine shelf
Having established the width of the continental shelf for coastal states at 200 nautical miles, the 1982 Convention granted them the right to increase this zone to 350 nautical miles (i.e. almost 650 km), if it is established that it is an extension of the shelf. And if we are talking about underwater elevations that have the same geological structure as the mainland, according to paragraph 6 of Article 76 of this document, the boundaries of the shelf of a coastal state can be expanded beyond 350 nautical miles.
In order to exercise the right to expand the shelf, a country must, within 10 years of joining the Convention, submit an application to a special international body – the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (created in 1997 in accordance with the 1982 Convention, it consists of about 20 experts from different countries).
The Commission does not have the authority to assign a corresponding section of the shelf to a particular state or to delimit water areas. Its task is to make a judgment, based on the scientific data presented, as to whether a specific area is the continental shelf or a deep-water section of the seabed that states cannot lay claim to.
Having reviewed the data presented (the process can take several years), the Commission makes recommendations. If the experts come to the conclusion that several countries have the right to one section, the issue is resolved through further negotiations between them.
In this case, the boundaries can be determined along the median line, which is understood as a line equidistant from all coasts. To date, Norway, Russia, Canada and Denmark have filed claims to provide a basis for seabed claims on extended continental shelves outside their EEZs in the Arctic Ocean.
In some cases, their interests overlap. For example, Russia, Denmark and Canada lay claim to large sections of the Lomonosov Ridge.
This underwater mountain range, which crosses the central part of the ocean, extends for approximately 1,800 km from Siberia to the coasts of Canada and Greenland (according to estimates, this section is one of the richest in hydrocarbon reserves).
US claims
The United States, which gained access to the Arctic by purchasing Alaska and the Aleutian Islands from Russia in 1867, is currently the only Arctic country that has not ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In December 2023, the United States unilaterally announced the expansion of its continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles, including in the Arctic and the Bering Sea.
According to a map published on December 19 on the State Department website, the US shelf was expanded to 350 nautical miles from the baselines in the Arctic and to 340 nautical miles in the Bering Sea.
As stated by the State Department, the US determined the limits of its shelf “in accordance with customary international law, as reflected in the relevant provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Scientific and Technical Guidelines of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.”
Russia did not recognize the change in the boundaries of the continental shelf announced by the US.
