The Falkland Islands, at the centre of a bitter sovereignty dispute between Britain and Argentina, are sitting on top of a “mind-boggling” quantity of oil which at current prices would be worth an incredible £33 trillion, an expert in the region has said.
And Dr Chris Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, has warned Russia is ready to push the boundaries of international law in a bid to get its hands on valuable natural resources – while acknowledging that one way or another, the oil would end up being extracted by one nation or another.
Dr Sabatini was commenting after the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) heard evidence suggesting Russia has discovered an Antarctic oil field ten times the size of the North Sea’s 50-year output.
Inevitably the revelation has sparked speculation about Vladimir Putin’s ambitions for the region – and Prof Sabatini said such concerns were not without foundation.
Dr Sabatini put the total quantity of oil locked away under the seas at roughly half a trillion barrels – a figure which dwarfs the total amount extracted from the North Sea since 1975 is less than 50 billion barrels.
He told Express.co.uk: “That’s obviously a quite mind-boggling amount.
“There’s just too much for it to be left down there.
“Argentina owes $40 million to the IMF, and there is a vast reserve essentially in its back yard.”
Dr Sabatini continued: “Russia will continue to challenge the rules-based order and will seek to cause chaos but unlike China it doesn’t really have the resources to drill.
“The Falklands is a potential flashpoint, although Javier Milei has been a lot more conciliatory about that than the previous Peronist regime.”
Referring to the Foreign Secretary’s trip earlier this year, he added: “If David Cameron had visited while Alberto Fernandez was President, they would have been very angry and would have tried to get all sorts of international condemnation about colonialism etc.
“If they return to power, the question of sovereignty will be firmly back on the agenda because it is not something which is going to go away. There’s too much at stake.”
The 1959 Antarctic Treaty prohibits all oil developments in the area and David Rutley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Americas and Caribbean, told the committee he had been Russia was conducting scientific research in the region. adding: “Russia has recently reaffirmed its commitment to the key elements of the treaty.”
However, Professor Klaus Dodds, from Royal Holloway College, told MPs Dodds they could not afford to take “norms, values and rules” of the agreement “for granted”.
He explained: “They are being actively stress tested and we need to prepare for the possibility that peace and collaboration will become harder.
“If we conclude that Russia is ‘prospecting’ rather than carrying out ‘scientific research’ we need to call that out and risk the breakdown of consensus. Failure to act will create further precedents and will not help preserve the effective functioning of the Antarctic Treaty.”
Sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory, is a major source of tension between the UK and Argentina.
The two nations fought a brief but bloody war in 1982 after then-junta General Leopoldo Galtieri invaded the remote archipelago.
Almost 1,000 servicemen from both sides died before the islands were eventually liberated.
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