Official: UN commission supports new territories in Russia’s Arctic

MOSCOW, Apr 3 (PRIME) – The U.N. said that some territories of the continental shelf under Russia’s request for Arctic shelf expansion should be included into the country’s shelf zone, the Federal Mineral Resources Agency’s Head Yevgeny Kiselyov said on Wednesday at an agency’s meeting.

“In the framework of the works that were done by the agency and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry this year, the authorities prepared materials during the sessions of the U.N. sub-commission that are very important for us. The commission said that the territories that we include in the expanded borders of our continental shelf are a continuation of structures of the shelf and continental parts of the Russian Federation,” he said.

“This is the most important statement that defines the success of our request to some extent.”

He saidthat there were still some technical issues left that the authorities planned to solve in the two or three coming sessions of the sub-commission.

In 2015, Russia submitted a revised bid to extend the Arctic shelf by adding the Lomonosov ridge and several other formations. Inferred resources of hydrocarbons of the formations amount to 4.9 billion tonnes of fuel equivalent.

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