U.N. examines claims to remote Rockall

Owen Bowcott

British claims to ownership of Rockall — the isolated Atlantic outcrop jutting out of a potentially vast and lucrative oilfield around 380km west of Scotland — are to be examined within weeks by the U.N.

A formal claim for thousands of square kilometres of the seabed surrounding the rock has been made by Denmark and the Faroe Islands, potentially overriding claims by Britain, Ireland and Iceland. At stake could be licences and income worth billions.

The four competing applications are likely to be reviewed by the U.N.'s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in March. Diplomatic talks between the four countries have been rotating around European capitals for several years, in the hope of an amicable division of the seabed in the Hatton-Rockall basin. They have failed so far to map out a mutually acceptable settlement.

The hunt for offshore gas and oil at a time of increasing energy demand is driving enthusiasm among coastal states around the world to annex as much of the seabed as they are legally permitted to.

In June, the commission's panel of marine experts dismissed Britain's application to extend its prospecting rights over 5,20,000 sq.kilometres of the ocean floor around Ascension Island in the south Atlantic.

The commission ruled that the island, an overseas British territory that is also a volcanic pinnacle, was too slender to generate rights to an extended zone of the submerged continental shelf.

History

The dispute over Rockall is historically complex. The Royal Navy formally annexed the rock in 1955 by hoisting the Union flag. The 1972 Island of Rockall Act formally declared it as part of Inverness-shire, Scotland, even though the nearest permanently inhabited settlement is 360km away in the Outer Hebrides.

Imperial ambitions were set back, however, by international ratification of the U.N. convention on the law of the sea, which states that: “Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.” The rival claims submitted to the commission in the past few years have focused on the surrounding Hatton-Rockall Basin, under which are believed to be oil and gas deposits. Rockall, nonetheless, sits on a plateau claimed by all four nations. Britain and Ireland have agreed a common marine border that leaves Rockall in the U.K. sector.

A U.K. Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We note that Denmark has made its submission in respect of the Faroe-Hatton plateau. We are presently studying this and the attached note verbale (diplomatic communication), which Denmark presented to the U.N. Secretary-General.

“The U.K. ... reaffirms its own commitment to the quadrilateral talks between the U.K., Denmark, Iceland and Ireland. The next round of talks is scheduled to be held in Reykjavik in May 2011.”— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011