The Unsuitablog

If you own an island in the middle of an ocean then you will shortly (assuming you are a nation, ravenous for oil and gas from the sea bed) have an awful lot of ocean floor in your clutches. The Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) is not just a couple of dots in the Atlantic, it is a fairly sizeable, if treacherous and inhospitable, pair of islands with a land area of just under 5,000 square miles. Up to now, the potential claim for oil and gas resources at the ocean floor was in the region of 125,000 square nautical miles. With the introduction of the new United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, this extends to a maximum of 380,000 square miles. Argentina will do everything it can to prevent the UK from making such a claim; it wants the ocean bed as much as the British Government.

If you fought for the UK during the two month-long Falklands War and were injured, then you must understand that the only “freedom” you were really injured for, was the freedom to suck hydrocarbons from the ocean bed: the UK Government knew this; as did the Argentine Junta, whose invasion was almost certainly predicated on the same mineral claims.

If a relative or friend of yours was among the 900 people who died in that war, then you should know that they died for oil and gas. Across the world, throughout the history of Industrial Civilization, thousands of people died thinking they were fighting for freedom, when they were really fighting for oil. It is on this basis that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is soaked in blood.

A vast tract of the south Atlantic seabed – rich in oil and minerals – was formally claimed by the United Kingdom yesterday in defiance of Argentinian opposition.

The submission to the United Nations’ Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) has been issued two weeks after the government in Buenos Aires lodged its application to extend control over an almost identical area of underwater territory.

The British claim is contained in a 63 page document that will be posted on the UN’s website. It defines the precise limits of the extended continental shelf area around the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

The islands are all British overseas territories, although ownership is disputed by Argentina. This is the fourth detailed, continental claim lodged with UN. The others concern the Ascension Islands, Rockall and the Bay of Biscay.

The Foreign Office minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, said: “Successful completion of this process will confirm the boundaries of the UK’s jurisdiction over its continental shelf, thus ensuring our sovereign rights to manage the shelf for future generations.”

The UK document deals concisely with the Argentinian counter-claim, stating: “The UK has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime area.”

The submission is one of an avalanche of last-minute claims for millions of square kilometres of the ocean floor pouring into the UN’s New York office in advance of an international deadline – on 13 May – for demarcating possession of extended continental shelves.

In the past two weeks Ghana, Pakistan, Norway, South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, France, Vietnam, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya and others have delivered boxes of documents to the UN in the hope of securing valuable oil, gas and mineral resources around the world.

The hefty files of detailed paperwork – one Australian submission ran to 80 volumes – are the culmination of years of underwater exploration by each state, plotting submarine contours that mark the outer edges of the continental shelf.

The complex rules of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permit states to extend their control and exploitation of the seabed beyond the traditional 200 nautical mile limit and up to 350 nautical miles offshore.

The precise extent of each claim frequently involves establishing the foot of an underwater continental slope, thousands of feet down in the chilly, dark oceans – and then measuring 60 miles outward.

Some claims, usually the legacies of unresolved international conflicts, are mutually exclusive, generating fresh diplomatic unease along the fissure lines of ancient boundary disputes. In the case of overlapping claims, the UN freezes the claims and asks the parties to reconsider.

As well as the overlapping claims for the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic, a dispute has emerged between France and Canada over claims to be presented for the seabed surrounding St Pierre and Miquelon, a small archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland. The French have also raised hackles by claiming the seabed near their Pacific island territories.

The 13 May deadline applies only to those states that were signatories of the original treaty 10 years ago. Other states, which signed at a later date, have more time left to submit their claims.

The United States has still not ratified the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but the prospect of neighbouring countries such as Canada and Russia carving up the seabed for exploration is rapidly shifting opinion in Washington.

(reproduced from The Guardian)

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Update: I have not, at any point, stated who should be the rightful “owner” of the Falklands, although the British claim has only existed since 1833 so is hardly water-tight. The idea that the British government would continue paying to defend the Falklands without any commercial potential, either material or strategic, is ludicrous — the commenter (who will not appear here due to offensive remarks) who implied the British Task Force was mobilised for altruistic reasons really needs to read his history books.

Try this: http://nebuchadnezzarwoollyd.blogspot.com/2007/03/oil-dominates-25th-falklands-war.html