Russia and Norway ended a 40-year dispute yesterday when they signed an Arctic border treaty, opening up the region to offshore oil and gas development.
Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev and Jens Stoltenberg, the premier of Norway, attended the signing in Murmansk, a Russian Barents Sea port near the Norwegian border.
The disputed territory in the Barents Sea covered 175,000 square kilometres—roughly half the size of Germany—between the Novaya Zemlya archipelago on the Russian side and the Svlabard archipelago on the Norwegian side.
Oil and gas exploration was prohibited there, and a large part of the area was a source of conflict due to unregulated fishing.
The treaty has now secured the continued co-operation on fishing between the two countries, and regulated oil and gas offshore exploration in the border zone.
The oil and gas reserves in the Barents Sea, which are now becoming more accessible due to melting ice, could be worth billions of dollars. Russia and Norway are among the countries keep to exploit the area’s reserves.
It is thought the previously disputed area could contain around 40 billion barrels of oil.
The treaty, signed by the foreign ministers, will now be submitted to the countries' parliaments for ratification.
