The Russian government on Tuesday announced that it had delivered “ample scientific data” to the United Nations to back its claim to more than 460,000 square miles of Arctic territory and the wealth of energy, gems and precious metals believed to lie within.

Moscow also is asserting ownership of the emerging Northern Sea Route, the potentially lucrative shipping route opening as Arctic ice melts.

Russia was the first to claim the Arctic sea shelf as sovereign territory in a thwarted bid in 2002, but the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway also are pursuing jurisdiction over seabed in the Arctic, where a quarter of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves may be embedded.

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes the right of countries to exercise sovereignty over an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nautical miles from their recognized shoreline borders. In cases where the continental shelf extends beyond that limit, the law of the sea allows a country to claim dominion up to 350 nautical miles from its shores.

In the documents submitted to the U.N. on Monday, Russia argues that the undersea territory it seeks to add to its recognized borders doesn’t fall under the 350-mile limit because the seabed and its resources are “natural components of the continent,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement said Russia expects the U.N. to begin considering its claim at a fall meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. But a U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, said that the commission isn’t expected to gather in full until early next year and that Russia’s submitted charts, maps and research data were being circulated among the 193 member nations for review.

Russia’s first claim to the Arctic sea shelf in 2002 was rejected on the grounds that Moscow hadn’t provided sufficient evidence of the country’s right to the territory.


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