Seen in the Guardian:
The United Kingdom is planning to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of the remote seabed off Antarctica, the Guardian has learned. The submission to the United Nations covers more than 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) of seabed, and is likely to signal a quickening of the race for territory around the south pole in the world’s least explored continent.
The claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, to which the UK is a signatory. It specifically states that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent. The treaty was drawn up to prevent territorial disputes.
This and an apparent expansion of seabed claims around other southern U.K. territories is described as securing claims on energy reserves as concerns are raised about dwindling supplies in currently producing oil- and gas-fields.
In addition to defying the Antarctic treaty which put all territorial claims into abeyance, such a stance would be counter to other treaties restricting mineral exploitation of the Antarctic, and it’s likely to tick off Chile and Argentina which have overlapping claims with the U.K. in the Antarctic.