Minister Sergey Donskoy. Photo: Trude Pettersen

Russia wants Arctic delimitation deal with Denmark

Negotiations must start immediately, Minister Sergey Donskoy tells President Putin.
September 08, 2016

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In a meeting devoted to Arctic developments yesterday, Minister of Natural Resources Sergey Donskoy informed Vladimir Putin about the country’s bid to the UN for an extension of its Arctic shelf.

According to the minister, there is a 550,000 square km overlapping area in the Russian and Danish claims. That area includes the North Pole point.

«In this connection, in order to speed up the handling of the Russian bid, it will be helpful to hold bilateral consultations with the Danish side on the issue of signing a deal on a preliminary delimitation of the adjacent parts of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean», Donskoy underlined.

«It is desirable to do that in the course of fall this year», Donskoy told the president.

According to the minister, Russia hopes to get its bid fully assessed already by the middle 2017, a transcript from the meeting reveals. The country officially submitted its claims to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in August 2015. Normal processing time in the UN body is 3-5 years.

Te Russian bid includes a 1,3 million square km area located beyond the country’s 200 mile economic zone. 

Over a three day session in August this year, a Russian delegation presented UN representatives with substantiated evidence of shelf claims in the Arctic. The presentation was made in New York as part of the 41st Session of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

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Last year’s submission of the claims comes after the country in 2001 unsuccessfully applied at the CLCS. Then, the UN body deemed the submitted materials insufficient.

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