WAR FOR RESOURCES

To what extent should scientific research be applied to solving practical tasks? "We need to work on things that have a commercial value - this is why this laboratory was set up. We cannot act like an old German professor who, as long as he had black bread and beer, could spend all his life on studying the pappus on a bee's belly!" the great American scientist and inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, once wrote.

Exactly in the same way, no-one doubts any longer that sea expeditions in the period of great geographic discoveries were hardly dictated merely by the scientific self-sacrifice of Columbus, Magellan and other famous travellers and sailors who embarked on journeys to find a sea way to India and shores rich in gold and spices…

In the case of the Russian expedition Arctic-2007, everything was completely open. No-one even thought of telling the world community that "they are studying the pappus on a bee's belly": the main purpose of the expedition was to outline the borders of Russia's Arctic shelf, or to be more precise, to prove that the underwater ridges of Lomonosov and Mendeleyev are part of Russia. One way or another, Moscow decided to "stake out its territory": near the underwater Lomonosov Ridge, the Russian scientific expedition had earlier collected the necessary evidence to be formulated and submitted to the UN by 2009. To this end, two bathyscaphes Mir-1 and Mir-2 on board the Academician Fedorov research vessel, not on board their native Mstislav Keldysh, submerged under the ice twice: once as a training submersion near Franz Joseph Land and the other at the North Pole where the Russian tricolour was installed, not to mention trifles like the sampling of the ocean floor at the North Pole. In any case, the sample is being analyzed by scientists now, while the deputy director of the Ocean Geology Russian Scientific Research Institute, Viktor Poselov, said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta: "A copious document of new scientific data has been prepared to substantiate Russia's claims to this part of the Arctic." The next expedition is planned for November. Moreover, Moscow is already openly making plans to develop deposits in the open shelf without waiting for the application containing scientific evidence to be accepted by the UN. In any case, the director-general of the Murmansk Shipping Company, Aleksandr Medvedev, told journalists that Russia has real opportunities to start exploratory drilling work in the next 18 months to find oil and gas in the shelf zone of the Russian sector of the Arctic. A proposal has been made to transform the shipping company's Sevmorput nuclear transport icebreaker into a floating ice-proof drilling platform. The vessel is capable of sailing through ice of up to one metre thick on its own.

However, if the Russian Mirs have fulfilled their task in full, political rivalry for the shelf, to all appearances, is only just starting. And it is not going to be easy.

"I am not sure what exactly they have hoisted there - a metal flag, a rubber flag or a plate on the ocean floor. But whatever it is, it has no legal significance or effect for this application," the deputy official spokesman for the US State Department, Tom Casey, said to cool off Russia's polar delight. "Of course, we are sceptical about this application and, in 2002, we had a chance to present a commentary for the technical commission which questioned Russia's claims. Even if they (the Russians) paint the Russian flag on these (shelf) ridges with a spray gun, this will have absolutely no significance for the technical assessment," Casey stressed.

The State Department representative also said that "in 2001, Russia submitted to the technical agency under the aegis of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea an application to expand its continental shelf beyond the limit of the traditional 200 sea miles." "In 2003, the committee established that the available materials were not enough to substantiate this application or adopt a technical decision, which is why the Russian expedition was plan-ned to carry out research to support this application," Casey said. "The Russian government insists on its application, having the right to do so as a member of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Unfortunately, the USA cannot do so because we have not yet ratified this convention and this is one of the reasons why we are interested and support the ratification of this convention by Senate, and we hope that after its holiday, Congress will properly consider this issue," the representative of the US State Department said.

However, Canada's reaction was much tougher. Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said in an interview with the CTB TV company that, "our sovereignty over the lands and waters of the Canadian Arctic is unquestionable". "You cannot just travel around and install flags, saying 'we want this territory'. This is not the 14th and 15th century. There are provisions of international law and protocols signed by Canada and Russia. Everything is clearly written there. For this reason, we are not worried about this expedition at all. This is just a show organized by Russia," MacKay explained. Soon Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper began a three-day visit to Canada's Arctic regions in one of which it is planned to create a deep-water sea port in the Arctic. In the 18 months of his premiership, Harper has travelled to the Canadian Arctic three times, which is regarded by observers as a sign that the problems of the region "are being prioritized". During his trip, the Canadian premier is expected to announce his decision to expand the territory of the Naanni National Park in the north-western territories. He will also visit the village of Resolute where a base might be set up to train servicemen for operations in Arctic conditions. Although the premier's visit to the country's Arctic regions had been planned for several months, the fact that it happened after Russia's "polar breakthrough" gives it a completely different significance. Last week Harper told journalists that the installation of the Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole confirmed the need for Canada to defend its sovereignty in the Arctic region. "This showed once again that sovereignty over the North and our country's sovereignty over the Arctic will remain an important issue for us," the prime minister said. According to Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, "there is no threat to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic". "The issue of sovereignty in the Arctic is not an issue. This is our country. This is our property. This is our sea. The Arctic belongs to Canada," he said.

The Russian polar explorer, Artur Chilingarov, has already said that, to put it mildly, he does not worry too much about international reaction. "I don't care what some foreign representatives say about the expedition," Chilingarov said soon after the expedition was completed. "We are happy that we got to the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, where not a single person had ever been and installed the Russian flag there," he added.

The Arctic has always belonged to Russia and will remain so, Chilingarov thinks, because it has always grown into the North and the Arctic. According to Chilingarov, this was the riskiest expedition for him. About 350 people - sailors, pilots and scientists - participated in it. "If anyone does not like this, let them go as deep as 4,300 metres and try to install something there," the chief of the expedition said.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had to make "soothing" statements and assure everyone that "the purpose of the expedition was not to stake out territory, but to prove that our shelf extends to the North Pole".

In fact, the USA itself recognizes Russia's actions as totally legitimate and, formally, it is very difficult to blame Moscow for trying to prove the identity of their own shelf and the Lomonosov and Mendeleyev ridges. But there is something else that is also clear: the Russian expedition "stirred the beehive", prompting interested countries to initiate a polar rivalry: the USA is sending it own icebreaker to the North Pole and intends to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, Canada is ready to defend it Arctic rights, while Denmark's and Sweden's response is just around the corner...

There is also a further factor. Specialists believe that, due to the notorious global warming, most of the ice in this region is likely to melt next year, which will make Arctic reserves much more accessible. The Lomonosov and Mendeleyev ridges hold 25 per cent of the world's oil and gas reserves and are, in fact, a second "Persian Gulf". Also,  oil and gas prices are continuing to skyrocket, which makes even the most expensive projects profitable. Moreover, there are deposits of tin, manganese, gold, nickel, lead and platinum under the Arctic Ocean. Diamonds can be extracted from near the Lomonosov Ridge.

It is clear that the dispute about the Russian Arctic expedition is in fact the beginning of a new "covert" war for resources which can now be developed, but which have not been divided between countries. The submersion of the Mirs was only the first step, and if anyone has made a mistake here, they are the authors of the "campaign" who are ready to talk about Russia's rights to the shelf as a fait accompli. Sometimes they make quite annoying mistakes. According to the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, a 13-year-old Finnish TV viewer made a discovery: it turns out that under the guise of a video of the deep-water "geopolitical expedition", Russian television at one point showed excerpts from James Cameron's "Titanic".

Indeed, the expedition took place in conditions of unprecedented attention from the press. Three main Russian channels were at the site of the expedition, and the Rossiya TV channel carried a report from the site of events at the North Pole the day the two Mir bathyscaphes submerged. Its report showed not just true footage, but also a video from under the water which showed one of the bathyscaphes. This was seen abroad as well - with the help of the Reuters news agency which disseminated the video by subscription. The subtitles in the upper left-hand corner of the screen during the "movie session" claimed that the viewer can see "the Arctic Ocean", while the correspondent said: "When the bathyscaphe reached a depth of 300 metres, the second machine piloted by Yevgeniy Chernyayev started its submersion". People on the other side of the screen wondered - in that case, who was filming? So they decided to check the Finnish schoolboy's guess that instead of documented footage, an excerpt from "Titanic", in which the Mirs were used, was shown: the editorial staff of Ilta-Sanomat showed the video to an employee of Tampere University who established that it was "cinema plagiarism". 

Reuters was forced to apologize to its subscribers and explain how they got hold of the fake video. The Rossiya TV channel declined to make any comment.