Moscow regards Norway's attempts to extract mineral resources on the continental shelf in the area of the Svalbard archipelago as a violation of obligations under the 1920 treaty, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
During the briefing, Zakharova said that in June the Norwegian government submitted a report on the development of mineral resources on the Norwegian continental shelf, including the area of the Svalbard archipelago.
"We consider Norway's attempts to withdraw the issues of the search and development of the continental shelf of the Svalbard archipelago from the 1920 Svalbard Treaty to be unlawful," the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Her words are quoted by INTERFAX.
Moscow believes that the continental shelf of the archipelago is a natural extension of its land and forms a single whole with it.
"The legal regime of the treaty fully applies to the shelf of the archipelago within the limits defined in article 1 of the treaty. Thus, Norway cannot establish and exercise any exclusive interests or rights in relation to the shelf in the specified area without the consent of all other parties to the treaty," the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
In this regard, Zakharova stressed that Moscow regards attempts to unilaterally regulate resource extraction activities in offshore areas as a violation of the regime of the 1920 treaty and obligations under it.
"We have repeatedly called on the Norwegian side to abandon such illegal practices from the point of view of international law, including in the context of fishing for marine biological resources or the development of mineral resources," she said.
In June, Western media reported that the Norwegian authorities were finalizing a plan to extract a number of metals from the bottom of the Greenland and Norwegian Seas southwest of Spitsbergen in order to help Europe meet its urgent needs for such resources.
According to the Financial Times, Norway may become the first country to receive metals needed in the production of batteries from the seabed. At the same time, according to rough estimates, 38 million tons of copper may lie in this zone, as well as deposits of cobalt, which is used in the production of batteries for electric vehicles. There may also be rare earth metals such as neodymium and dysprosium, which are used in the assembly of electric vehicles and wind turbines; moreover, the supply of these metals is currently mainly controlled by China.
The Svalbard Treaty of 1920, in particular, gives Norway the right to engage in mining on Spitsbergen and in its territorial waters.
However, Russia, the EU and the UK are in dispute with Norway over which area of Oslo can carry out such activities, the newspaper reminds.
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
