Russia renewed its claim to more than 463,000 square miles of resource-rich Arctic territory in a new application to the United Nations on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Russia filed a similar claim in 2002, but the U.N. rejected it due to insufficient evidence. The foreign ministry said this time around it has "ample scientific data collected in years of scientific research," reported The Associated Press. The Arctic sea shelf it is claiming extends more than 250 nautical miles from the shore.
The other countries bordering the Arctic - the U.S., Canada, Norway and Denmark - reject Russia's claim and have been attempting to assert their own jurisdiction over the area, which is thought to contain as much as a quarter of Earth's undiscovered oil and gas, or about five billion tons, according to the Telegraph. Shrinking polar ice has opened up new opportunities for extraction and intensified these efforts.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries can claim an exclusive economic area up to 200 miles from their coastline or "as far as their land territory naturally extends from shore beneath the sea," explains the Telegraph.
Russia has claimed that two underwater ridges of continental crust, Lomonosov Ridge and the Mendeleev Ridge, are geological extensions of the Russian continental shelf.
Denmark submitted a similar claim in December 2014, arguing that Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of Greenland. Canada and Norway are also expected to make claims under the treaty, and while the U.S. is not a signatory, it too may decide to make a claim.
In 2007, Russia claimed the Arctic seabed by using a submarine to plant a titanium Russian flag in the ocean floor near the North Pole, according to BBC.
The Kremlin announced last week the rolling out of a new military doctrine in which it plans to strengthen its naval forces in the Arctic, which will include a new fleet of icebreakers.
Earlier this year, Russia conducted military exercises in the area involving 38,000 servicemen, more than 50 ships and submarines and 110 aircraft.
Environmental activist group Greenpeace warned of the risks associated with Arctic exploration.
"The melting of the Arctic ice is uncovering a new and vulnerable sea, but countries like Russia and Norway want to turn it into the next Saudi Arabia," Greenpeace Russia Arctic campaigner Vladimir Chuprov said in a statement. "Unless we act together, this region could be dotted with oil wells and fishing fleets within our lifetimes."
