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New Zealand is keeping its options open to match British plans to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of the seabed off Antarctica, says an academic who tracks issues involving the Law of the Sea and the Antarctic Treaty.
"New Zealand has reserved its right to make a claim," said Karen Scott, a senior lecturer in law at Canterbury University. "But I think it would be quite unlikely to lodge a claim at this stage."
In April last year, New Zealand applied to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to take control of 1.7 million sq km of seabed - outside the existing 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone - on the continental shelf around the mainland and its main islands.
Control of the additional area - more than six times the size of New Zealand and stretching in some places 563km from shore - will give rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to billions of dollars worth of minerals and biological resources on the seabed.
But New Zealand did not ask for the seabed off its Ross Dependency in Antarctica, said Ms Scott. "New Zealand did not claim a NZ portion of Antarctica's seabed but reserved a right to do so at a later stage."
Australia, which claims 42 per cent of the Antarctic, included data on the seabed off its Antarctic territory in its UNCLOS claim.
"But Australia asked the commission expressly not to consider the Antarctic portion of its UNCLOS claim," said Ms Scott. She said some officials felt that by lodging the data for a claim, it was possible to keep open options for making that claim past the UN deadline - which was 2009 for many countries.
Britain is collecting survey data which will enable it to make its own claim at the UN for Antarctic seabed. The Guardian newspaper reported such a claim was likely to signal a quickening of the race for territory in Antarctica.
The newspaper was told by Britain's Foreign Office the data is being gathered and processed for a UNCLOS claim to the UN which could give Britain oil, gas and mineral exploitation rights up to 350 nautical miles into the Southern Ocean.
One possibility might be for the UK Government to lodge a legal claim with the UN's commission - effectively parking it for consideration at a future date.
Ms Scott said research voyages by NZ hydrographers and marine geologists likely meant this country already had sufficient data to make a claim in the Ross Dependency. NZ's is the smallest of the seven territorial claims in Antarctica which were effectively suspended by the Antarctic Treaty.
Many countries outside those seven did not agree that the territorial claims were legitimate, while countries such as the United States and Russia had kept open the option of making their own claims.
Antarctica has large known reserves of many minerals, including copper, gold and silver, as well as oil and gas, and, in May 2006, Australian senator Barnaby Joyce urged his country to begin preparations for mining their territory.
An Australian study in a policy paper released earlier this year has said that drilling for oil in Antarctica will be economic when the international price reaches US$200/barrel.
But the region is also partly protected from mining by the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, also known as the Madrid Protocol, signed in 1991.
Signed by 46 countries, it bans mining on the continent and the agreement is not up for review until 2041.
"At the moment, there is a moratorium on commercial mining below 60 degrees south latitude," said Ms Scott.
But in the Arctic, mining companies were rapidly developing technology to enable mining and drilling in similar hostile environments.
- NZPA
