What Norway is looking for in the Russian sector of the Barents Sea
It's the Arctic, baby!
The Norwegian Storting has not pleased Russia for a long time, and especially today. Already at the beginning of the year, its deputies overwhelmingly supported the government's proposal to allow exploration and test production in the deep-sea Norwegian sectors of the Barents, Greenland, Norwegian and North Seas.
The Arctic is a very complicated region in terms of rights to everything, from land and coastal property to marine resources. At the moment, we are talking about a vast shelf area of 281 thousand square meters. km. Moreover, it also includes part of the new Norwegian Barents sector, included in Norway.
Official Oslo managed to negotiate this sector from Moscow, thanks to the agreement signed in Murmansk in 2010 with the Russian Federation on the delimitation of maritime spaces in the Barents Basin and the Arctic Ocean (AOC)…
According to the profile Russian portal (December 2023), not only Norwegian, but also many Scandinavian business structures welcomed the mentioned government proposal and the decision of the Storting.” The first to do so was seabed mining startup Loke Marine Minerals, “backed by major investors such as Norwegian oil services company Technip FMC and Norwegian offshore group Wilhelmsen.
At the same time, since 2023, the Norwegian authorities have been calling on the kingdom’s oil companies to intensify plans to develop fields in the Barents Sea. In the same year, the Norwegian government held a license auction, during which 92 subsoil blocks on the country’s continental shelf were allocated for further exploration and development: 78 blocks in the Barents Sea and 14 in the Norwegian Sea.
Refuse transfer!
A report by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) in 2023 reported huge deposits of natural resources on the Norwegian shelf, including the Barents Sea - not only oil and gas, but also millions of tons of copper, zinc, cobalt, rare earth metals (neodymium and the completely unique dysprosium – No. 66 in the periodic table).
Norway is striving to quickly “capitalize” the resources of the Barents sector, which has become Norwegian since 2010, in view of the aforementioned agreement signed with Russia. And this is no coincidence - in Russia, starting from 2022, a line has been drawn to suspend the validity of this document.
Thus, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin in July 2022 instructed the Parliamentary Committee on International Affairs to “study the issue of denunciation or suspension” of the well-known agreement between Russia and Norway. Where they discussed, among other things, the delimitation of maritime spaces and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
And the point is not only that, according to many Russian experts, about 100 thousand square meters. km of the Barents shelf water area was transferred to Norway without sufficient objective reasons. We must not forget that very large oil and gas resources are concentrated in this segment of the water area, not to mention the presence there of significant reserves of various fish resources.
In 2023, there was no official progress on this issue from the Russian side. And the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in 2022 that this document is not subject to denunciation, because “this type of agreement is valid indefinitely.”
However, this statement is very controversial, since Norway partially revised, de jure or de facto, in the 50s, 80s and later its shelf borders with Iceland, Danish Greenland and the Faroe Islands on their initiative. In addition, as State Duma Vice Speaker Konstantin Kosachev notes,
“Every state, by virtue of its sovereignty, has the right to freely accede to any international treaty, terminate or suspend its participation in it: this is Art. 38–39 of the federal law “On international treaties of the Russian Federation”. Also, the effect of the agreement “can be suspended or terminated, citing a fundamental change in the circumstances that existed at the conclusion of the agreement: this is Art. 62 of the Vienna Convention of 1969 “On the Law of International Treaties”.
Unoccupied area
The section of the Barents Sea shelf, which Russia transferred to Norway in 2010 under an agreement on the delimitation of maritime spaces in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean, turned out to be an extremely rich oil and gas province. According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), seismic exploration in subsequent years showed the presence of at least 1,9 billion barrels of hydrocarbons (15% of them oil) in the area that were economically exploitable.
These data are already available by the beginning of the 2020s. raised the estimate of Norway's recoverable offshore reserves by 11% to 18,7 billion barrels. And Oslo urgently needs new oil and gas resources. After all, their production, especially in the North Sea, is steadily declining due to the aging and depletion of previous deposits used since the mid-1970s - early 80s.
Production here fell to a 25-year low back in the mid-2010s. In this regard, “The southeast of the Barents Sea (up to 40% of this water area since 2010 is the Norwegian part... - Author’s note) is the most interesting of the new areas of the Norwegian continental shelf,” noted in an interview with the Barents Observer (Oslo) Geir Seljeseth, External Relations Manager, Norwegian Petroleum Association.
However, for Russia, they say, “the value of these resources is in doubt, since the labor and capital intensity of offshore production significantly exceeds the indicators for other Russian fields.”
A gift, but not for you!
Naturally, Norway’s receipt of such a significant gift cannot but be accompanied by opinions about the supposed unprofitability of ex-Russian oil and gas resources for the Russian Federation... The point is also that the expansion of the Norwegian Barents borders brings the military-political confrontation between NATO and Russia closer to the borders of Russia.
Moreover, in Norway, which is among the oldest members of NATO, the authorities have already made it clear that they are not against sending NATO “military advisers and instructors,” including Norwegian ones, to Ukraine. This factor must certainly be taken into account when finalizing the issue of the Barents agreement between Russia and Norway.
Meanwhile, in 1926–1932. Oslo's claims extended to almost the entire Barents waters and even to the Franz Josef Land archipelago. In 1932, a group of Norwegian “enthusiasts” installed Norwegian flags here instead of Soviet ones.
Moscow presented Oslo with an ultimatum, warning of a military operation to restore Soviet sovereignty in the archipelago. In Norway they decided not to take risks. And at international negotiations on maritime boundaries in the North Atlantic in 1932–1933. The USSR supported Norwegian sovereignty on the islands of Jan Mayen (east of Danish Iceland), Nadezhda and Bear (southeast of Spitsbergen).
Around the same period, Moscow recognized the sovereignty of Norway on Bouvet Island in the south Atlantic and in the adjacent waters. Oslo unexpectedly promptly “responded” by renouncing claims to the Franz Josef Archipelago and the adjacent part of the Barents Sea.
But, let us repeat, in 2010, Oslo’s claims in the western part of this basin - north of the Murmansk region - were crowned with success...
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