Reuters: U.S. ship heads for Arctic to define territory
U.S. and University of New Hampshire scientists on the Coast Guard Cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday on a three-week journey. They will create a three-dimensional map of the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland.
The Healy will launch again on September 6, when it will be joined by Canadian scientists aboard an icebreaker, who will help collect data to determine the thickness of sediment in the region. That is one factor a country can use to define its extended continental shelf.
With oil at $114 a barrel, after hitting a record $147 in July, and sea ice melting fast, countries like Russia and the United States are looking north for possible energy riches.
“These are places nobody’s gone before, in essence, so this is a first step,” said Margaret Hays, the director of the oceanic affairs office at the U.S. State Department. She said the data collected may provide information to the public about future oil and natural gas sources for the United States.
This will be the fourth year that the United States has collected data to define the limits of its continental shelf in the Arctic.
Russia, which has claimed 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters, last summer planted its flag on the ocean floor of the North Pole.
Very interesting. Would this voyage to the Arctic have anything to do with this invasion?
Filed under: Everything Else , Arctic, Chukchi, gas, gas prices, gasoline, Georgia, Healy, Oil, oil prices, Russia, University of New Hampshire
