Newsmax

The Middle East remains the world’s focus for energy supplies, but the next “battleground” in the search for oil and gas resources could well be the frozen wastes of the Arctic.

And Russia appears determined to seize a huge portion of the region’s vast untapped reserves.

The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the Arctic could hold 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas.

The region also contains some 90 billion barrels of oil, an amount equal to 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered reserves.

Rising energy prices, meanwhile, are making the extraction of those reserves increasingly cost efficient, at a time when daily world oil consumption is expected to climb 20 percent by 2030.

“Given the Arctic’s vast supply of energy resources and the world’s growing energy demands, it’s neither surprising nor alarming that Arctic nations are beginning to stake their respective claims,” writes Alan Dowd, contributing editor at The American Legion Magazine.

“What is alarming is how one Arctic nation is going about this.”

That nation is Russia.

In 2001, Russia claimed almost half of the Arctic Circle, basing its claim on “a dubious interpretation of an underwater ridge linking to the Russian landmass,” Dowd reports. A Russian expedition planted the nation’s flag under the North Pole in 2007.

In 2009, Russia announced plans to build a string of military bases along its northern tier, and in 2011 announced plans to deploy two army brigades — 10,000 troops — to defend its Arctic claims.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has boasted: “Russia intends without a doubt to expand its presence in the Arctic.”

The United States has also expressed its determination to secure its rights in the Arctic, issuing a statement at the end of the George W. Bush administration that the U.S. “has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests.”

The Obama administration has issued a similar statement.

Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are also taking steps to assert their claims to a portion of the Arctic, with Norway and Sweden both conducting Arctic war games in recent years.

Some observers say the United States can help secure its Arctic claims, and limit Russia’s, by joining the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has already been ratified by other Arctic nations, according to Dowd, a senior fellow at Canada’s Fraser Institute.

Protecting American claims could prove to be a problem, he adds. The United States currently has only three polar icebreakers, and two of them have exceeded their projected 30-year lifespan.

Russian can deploy 20 icebreakers.