By Keith Halliday -- Northern history is full of tales of gold rushes and staking stampedes. You might not have noticed, but today we’re engaged in one of the biggest land grabs in world history: the partition of the Arctic Ocean. Canada is in the process of claiming 1.75 million square kilometres of seabed currently outside our 200-nautical-mile economic zone. Off the NWT and Nunavut, this could represent an area bigger than Afghanistan (and a lot easier to grab). But there’s a big difference between what’s happening now and what happened during the gold rush: This one is happening in slow motion under the auspices of the United Nations, and is led by scientists and politicians, not stampeders.

Nonetheless, it has huge implications. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil north of the Arctic Circle, including the regions Canada is likely to claim off the NWT and Nunavut. The USGS also estimates 1,700 trillion cubic feet of natural gas waiting to be found.

Those are huge numbers, representing about 20 per cent of the undiscovered oil and gas remaining in the world. The Arctic nations are also talking about using the process to improve environmental controls in the region. However, one senses that oil and gas is the real interest here.

But before you get too excited and head to the submarine dealer, remember that this land grab is moving at a glacial pace. In the old days, countries claimed three or 12 miles of territorial waters off their coasts. The rest of the ocean was international waters. Then, in the 1970s, countries – including Canada – agreed on 200-mile “exclusive economic zones.”

Since then, international bureaucrats have created the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and its “extended continental shelf” process. Experts spend their entire careers studying the technicalities of all this, but essentially the idea is that countries can claim the seabed for great distances past their 200-mile limit if it is continental shelf connected to their shores. Given the Arctic’s geographic features and how shallow it is, this means Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Denmark (on behalf of Greenland) are likely to divide up almost the entire seabed.

But instead of sending in their navies as might have happened in the 19th century, the countries involved have agreed to start their negotiations using scientific data. Each country is mapping the sea floor, attempting to prove that its continental shelf extends as far as possible. Canada and Russia are both attempting to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge is connected to their shores, since it extends right past the North Pole on both sides.

The Russians have a head start on the mapping and have sent a submarine to plant the Russian flag under the North Pole, but Canada has until 2013 to submit its claim. After that there will be years of negotiations, potentially with less science and more politics is involved. We don’t know how long that will take or how favourable the outcome will be for Canada.

Then we will have to deal with another uncertainty: how Ottawa will accommodate the territories’ desire to be involved (and benefit from) undersea oil-and-gas development. Right now, the federal government has the lead role. One final uncertainty, and this is possibly the biggest question of all, is whether undersea Arctic oil and gas will ever be developed off Canadian shores. There are four big issues here.

First, the USGS figures are estimates and the reserves could be much smaller. Second, extracting and moving the energy to market might be uneconomical compared to other resources (although the extra potential might boost the business case for Northern pipelines). Third, the regulatory and environmental processes remain murky. The struggles of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline are not encouraging here.

The last issue is whether the gas will even be wanted. Pumping Arctic oil and gas will only be possible if global warming keeps melting the ice. But just about everybody agrees global warming is a bad thing and that we should be doing all we can to stop it. Exploring for and burning fossil fuels contributes to the problem. The irony may be too powerful for our governments. Carbon taxes, regulations and new technologies may undermine demand for Arctic oil and gas.

So what does this mean for Northerners? It all suggests that, despite the huge potential resources in play, gambling to develop oil and gas on our extended continental shelf will make the Mackenzie Valley pipeline look like a get-rich-quick scheme.