THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Denmark plans to lay claim to the North Pole and other areas in the Arctic, where melting ice is creating new shipping routes, fishing grounds and drilling opportunities for oil and gas, according to a leaked government document.
The draft document titled "Strategy for the Arctic" said Denmark's Science Ministry has started collecting data to formally submit a claim for several areas to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf no later than 2014.
To be successful, the Danes will have to present evidence proving that the North Pole is geologically linked to Greenland - which has been part of Denmark for more than 600 years[.]
Russia, Norway, Canada and the US have their own claims - sometimes competing - in a region believed to hold as much as 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
The Danish government confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first obtained by Danish Radio and published online by newspaper Information.
Denmark has for years explored potential claims to areas off Greenland, a semiautonomous territory, but this is the first time the government explicitly states it will make a claim for the North Pole, said Martin Breum, a Danish journalist who has written a book about Denmark's interests in the Arctic. » | Wednesday, May 18, 2011
