The new British empire? UK plans to annex south Atlantic

[Aptrgangr]

The new British empire? UK plans to annex south Atlantic

Owen Bowcott
Saturday September 22, 2007
The Guardian

Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned.The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting.
Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN - which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina - before an international deadline for registering interests.

Relying on detailed geological and geophysical surveys by scientists and hydrographers, any state can delineate a new "continental shelf outer limit" that can extend up to 350 miles from its shoreline. Data has been collected for most of Britain's submissions and Chris Carleton, head of the law of the sea division at the UK Hydrographic Office and an international expert on the process, said preliminary talks on Rockall are being held in Reykjavik, Iceland, next week.Mr Carleton believes the Falklands claim has the most potential for acrimonious political fallout. Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense: seismic tests suggest there could be up to 60m barrels under the ocean floor.
Britain has been granted licences for exploratory drilling around the islands within the normal 200-mile exploration limit and any new claim to UNCLCS would extend territorial rights further into the Atlantic.

"It would be beyond the 200-mile limit but less than 350 miles," said Mr Carleton, who is involved in preparing the submission. "It effectively joins up the area around South Georgia to the Falklands. It's a claim but how it's handled has not been decided yet. The Argentinians will say it's not ours to claim. It's all a bit tricky."
Martin Pratt, director of research at Durham University's international boundaries research unit, added: "The Russians may be claiming the Arctic but the UK is claiming a large chunk of the Atlantic. Some states might ask why a big power is entitled to huge stretches of the ocean's resources thousands of miles away from its land, but that's the way the law is."

Because of the sensitivities - earlier this year Buenos Aires scrapped a 1995 agreement with the UK to share any oil found in the adjacent waters - the first formal application from the UK is likely to centre on Ascension.
The volcanic island, 1,000 miles from the African mainland, sits just to one side of the mid-Atlantic ridge. No gas or oil is likely to be found below the surrounding waters but there could be significant mineral deposits on the ocean floor.
Talks have already begun between Ireland, Iceland and Denmark for the division of rights far out into the north Atlantic. It includes the island of Rockall and the sub-sea Hatton ridge. The competing claims are nowhere near final resolution although Ireland and the UK have agreed a common boundary.

Other countries that have submitted claims to the ocean floors around remote overseas dependencies have run into fierce resentment from neighbouring nations. France, which this summer registered its claim to thousands of square miles around New Caledonia, in the Pacific, has received protests from Vanuatu warning that the claim has "serious implications and ramifications on Vanuatu's legal and traditional sovereignty". Russia was criticised this summer for making claims beneath the Arctic Ocean.
The UN body has been progressing slowly through its casework. The process of extending the normal 200-mile limit requires volumes of technical evidence of submarine soundings. According to the convention on the law of the sea, applicant states may register their rights by "establishing the foot of the continental slope, by meeting the requirements stated for the thickness of sedimentary rocks".

Once demarcated, the ocean floor may then be claimed up to 60 nautical miles from the bottom of the continental slope. When territorial rights have been obtained, states have the right to extract any minerals, natural gas or oil discovered in the annexed seabed.
There is a deadline of May 2009 for claims from the UK and other countries to be submitted, although states that ratified the treaty later have more time. "The amount of technical data required is massive," said Mr Pratt. "Australia recently submitted 80 volumes."
In the past, Greenpeace has described the process as a "land grab".

The new British empire? UK plans to annex south Atlantic ocean floor round the Falklands | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

Scramble for the seabed: or how Rockall could be the key to a British oil bonanza | Environment | The Guardian

[Like The Roman]

As the world approaches peak oil production, then you'll see the economic powers frantically searching for new sources. I suggest you read up on peak oil and how we are approaching the biggest recession the world has ever seen.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Like The Roman

As the world approaches peak oil production, then you'll see the economic powers frantically searching for new sources. I suggest you read up on peak oil and how we are approaching the biggest recession the world has ever seen.

Do the inhabitants of Tristan and St. Helena need oil? I mean, they are living off their sheep quite well.

[Carnyx]

Originally Posted by Like The Roman

As the world approaches peak oil production, then you'll see the economic powers frantically searching for new sources. I suggest you read up on peak oil and how we are approaching the biggest recession the world has ever seen.

They are still quite good natural reserves. We'll be old or 6 feet under when this happens.

[Like The Roman]

Originally Posted by Carnyx

They are still quite good natural reserves. We'll be old or 6 feet under when this happens.

There are still huge reserves left, of course. The problem is that as an oil well is depleted, it becomes harder to extract:

Energy return on energy investment

When oil production first began in the mid-nineteenth century, the largest oil fields recovered fifty barrels of oil for every barrel used in the extraction, transportation and refining. This ratio is often referred to as the Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI or EROEI). Currently, between one and five barrels of oil are recovered for each barrel-equivalent of energy used in the recovery process. As the EROEI drops to one, or equivalently the Net energy gain falls to zero, the oil production is no longer a net energy source. This happens long before the resource is physically exhausted.

Note that it is important to understand the distinction between a barrel of oil, which is a measure of oil, and a barrel of oil equivalent (BOE), which is a measure of energy. Many sources of energy, such as fission, solar, wind, and coal, are not subject to the same near-term supply restrictions that oil is. Accordingly, even an oil source with an EROEI of 0.5 can be usefully exploited if the energy required to produce that oil comes from a cheap and plentiful energy source. Availability of cheap, but hard to transport, natural gas in some oil fields has led to using natural gas to fuel enhanced oil recovery. Similarly, natural gas in huge amounts is used to power most Athabasca Tar Sands plants. Cheap natural gas has also led to Ethanol fuel produced with a net EROEI of less than 1, although figures in this area are controversial because methods to measure EROEI are in debate.

Here's another:

Peak oil production—has it happened already?
Further information: List of oil fields

World Crude Oil Production 1960-2004. Sources: DOE/EIA, IEA

World Crude Oil Production 2001-2007.[39] Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency

As of July of 2007, analysts still disagree on whether peak production capacity has been reached.

The IEA projects non-OPEC production estimates for 2007 and 2008 to remain largely unchanged from July 2007, at 50.0 mb/d and 51.0 mb/d, respectively. Growth is projected to recede thereafter as the slate of verifiable investment projects diminishes. [40]“ The concept of peak oil production and its timing are emotive subjects which raise intense debate. Much rests on the definition of which segment of global oil production is deemed to be at or approaching peak. Certainly our forecast suggests that the non-OPEC, conventional crude component of global production appears, for now, to have reached an effective plateau, rather than a peak. ”


The report points to only a small amount of supply growth from OPEC producers, with 70% of the increase coming from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Angola as security and investment issues continue to impinge on oil exports from Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela.[40]

Analysts from Wood Mackenzie contend that maximum production of oil will not occur before 2014. Kate Dourian, Platts' Middle East editor, has a different opinion. "Some sources say half the world's oil has already been produced, whereas Saudi Aramco is saying there is still another trillion barrels out there." She is also quick to point out that politics has entered the equation. "Some countries are becoming off limits. Major oil companies operating in Venezuela find themselves in a difficult position because of the resource nationalism that's spreading. These countries are now reluctant to share their reserves"[41]

The Iraq war is about peak oil. As I said, we're just trying to claim resources now amd that's what this article indicates.