Russia Claims Resource Rich North Pole
Russian explorers readied for a historic descent to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole on Wednesday as part of an expedition to claim the area for Russia, expedition organisers said.
Two Russian ships carrying the explorers, a research vessel and a nuclear ice-breaker were due to reach by 1600 GMT the site from which two mini-submarines will make the descent, they said in a statement.
“The dive is due to happen on Wednesday night,” said Sergei Bolyasnikov, an official at the Arctic and Antarctic Institute in Saint Petersburg, which is organizing the mission.
The dive is believed to be the first of its kind and is part of an epic voyage that aims to advance Russian claims to a swathe of Arctic seabed thought to be rich in oil and gas.
Two Mir mini-submarines were to take the explorers, led by parliament member Artur Chilingarov, to a depth of around 4,200 metres (14,000 feet) to the seabed, where they will carry out scientific tests and deposit a Russian flag.
“Having your feet reach such a depth is like taking the first step on the moon,” Chilingarov, a veteran Arctic explorer, was quoted as saying in an interview with RIA Novosti news agency.
“The Arctic-2007 mission should become a landmark in Russia’s mastery of the North Pole,” the Novye Izvestia daily wrote Wednesday. “There is already serious talk of a new Cold War.”
Russian media reports suggested a US expedition that set off from Norway on July 1 to study another part of the Arctic seabed, the Gakkel Ridge, was part of a race between Moscow and Washington for the Arctic’s mineral riches.
But the US expedition’s robotic vehicles were to hunt for “life and hydrothermal vents on the Arctic seafloor,” said the website of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which was organising the voyage.
The Russian expedition, which set off on July 24 from the northern Russian port of Murmansk, hopes to establish that a section of seabed passing through the North Pole is in fact an extension of Russia’s landmass.
There is growing international rivalry in the region as energy reserves grow scarce in other parts of the world and the melting of the polar ice caps makes the area more accessible for research and economic activity.