Issues of Delineating the Russian Arctic Shelf Border

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of justifying the borders of the Arctic continental shelf. The author mentions two international principles of maritime space division: the methods of 'median' lines and collecting the evidence base. He also shows positive examples of 'staking the rights' by collecting scientific proof: the Barents sea (Norway) and the sea of Okhotsk (Russia) shelf. The researcher emphasizes the Soviet and modern Russian experience of the Arctic exploration which is actually a collection of the evidence base. The article provides the economic assessment of collecting the evidence base carried out by Russia in 2000-2012 in order to 'post' the ownership right on the Arctic shelf. As an information base the author used data of different ministries and departments, scientific organizations, mineral developers, policy documents and official statistics. The researcher estimates the total cost of collecting the evidence base about 96,2-101,6 billion rubles

Keywords

• continental shelf
• maritime spaces
• border
• evidence base collecting
• economic costs
• Arctic
• Russia