17 - Negotiation of a minerals regime

Summary

In 1984 the Secretary-General reported that ‘exploration for mineral deposits has barely started in Antarctica’. The reasons are clear; there is little incentive to search for economic deposits because of the hostile environment, lack of infrastructure, significant transportation problems, and high costs of exploration and mining operations and of developing the necessary technology. It is notable, for example, that the Antarctic continent is submerged thousands of feet below sea level by an ice-cap and only approximately 2% of the entire continent is exposed.

Despite these apparently insuperable difficulties, international attention has been attracted by discoveries of natural gas by the Glomar Challenger on the continental shelf off the Ross Ice Shelf in 1973, interests which became more acute after the oil crisis of 1970. Indeed, spectacular claims were made for a ‘Middle East’ in the Antarctic, including an assertion by the Wall Street Journal that oil reserves reported by the United States Geological Survey almost matched ‘the proven reserves of the entire United States’. Geological surveys which have been undertaken suggest a more conservative estimation of resources. Two mineral accumulations have been identified which are sufficiently large to term ‘deposits’; iron in the Prince Charles Mountains and coal in the Transantarctic Mountains. Occurrences of a wide range of minerals have been recorded including: copper, molybdenum, gold, silver, chromium, nickel, cobalt, tin, uranium, titanium, manganese, lead and zinc. Predictions are based in part upon the similarity between the Antarctic continent and other southern continents of comparable structure and age.