Washington (Platts)--2Mar2010/635 pm EST/2335 GMT

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has warned that if the Obama administration does not step up the implementation of a Bush-era policy toward the potentially energy-rich Arctic region, the US Congress may have to intervene.

"It may be necessary for Congress to step in and help move the process," Murkowski said late Monday during a roundtable on Arctic policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "While certain branches of the government, like the Navy and Coast Guard, are developing and implementing their portions of the policy, it is still not nearly to the degree I would like. Certainly other Arctic and non-Arctic nations are moving much more quickly to develop policies and support them, than we are."

Recent estimates have framed the Arctic as a potentially rich source of oil and gas, with 22% of the world's undiscovered reserves, and melting sea ice caused by global climate change could mean those resources are easier to extract. Arctic resources have already led several nations, including Russia, Canada and even non-Arctic China, to make aggressive claims to areas of the region.

Murkowski, the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has long pushed for the federal government to pay more attention to the Arctic.

President George W. Bush in January 2009 released a presidential directive on its Arctic region policy, which called for more international cooperation in developing Arctic energy resources, and for progress to be made in settling boundary issues that the US has with Canada and Russia.

In addition, among a host of other issues, the policy presses for the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. In her remarks Monday, Murkowski reiterated her support for that treaty.

Alaska's other senator, Democrat Mark Begich, has long been a proponent of the Law of the Sea treaty, and in remarks to the same roundtable Monday he also said the US should claim a seat by ratifying the treaty.

"The Law of the Sea was negotiated in 1982 to settle long-standing disputes over national rights to offshore waters and resources, and Senate ratification of this treaty would put the United States at the table at a time of great change in the Arctic," Begich said.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has been ratified by most major nations, including those Arctic nations which could lay competing claim to the sea floor. While former President Ronald Reagan opposed ratification, all US presidents beginning with Bill Clinton have supported it.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the treaty in 2007, but a handful of Republicans who claimed it would undermine US sovereignty managed to stave off its consideration in the full Senate.

The treaty, among other things, sets up a mechanism for countries to arbitrate disagreements over claims to undersea territory. Under the treaty, the US could claim millions of additional square miles of the Arctic sea floor than it is currently entitled to under international law.

The US has already begun efforts to map the sea floor, sending two expeditions to the Arctic last year. Those preparations will be crucial if the US intends to make a claim under the treaty. Countries have 10 years from when they sign the treaty to make a claim.

Oil and gas lease sales in parts of the Arctic that the US already controls have attracted record-setting bids, although actual development there has been hampered by lawsuits filed by environmental groups.

Last year Begich introduced seven bills in the Senate that would address a variety of Arctic issues, including investment in infrastructure such as Coast Guard bases and new icebreakers, sharing revenue from oil and gas development and support for research into dealing with oil spills in broken ice. The bills are still being considered in several committees.

--Derek Sands, derek_sands@platts.com