“We will file the claim in the first quarter [of 2015] and will consider this claim at a subcommittee meeting in June or July,” he told reporters.
The Arctic shelf is believed to hold enormous untapped resources of oil and natural gas, something that Russia has been laying claims to, along with four other Arctic nations, namely the United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark.
Russia's earlier bid was turned down by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, with a suggestion to look for solid proof that would substantiate its claim for the Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges.
Under international law, an Arctic country is not liable to territories lying beyond its exclusive economic zone, which extends for 230 miles from the country's maritime border.
The North Pole and the Arctic Ocean are not owned by any country, but if Russian scientists manage to prove that Lomonosov and Mendeleev ridges are a continuation of Russia's continental shelf, the country may expand its territory by an additional 460,000 square miles and get a priority on the right to extract hydrocarbons there.
