US, Canada to negotiate maritime boundary in Beaufort Sea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and Canada on Tuesday said they will create a task force this autumn to negotiate the maritime boundary in the Beaufort Sea and resolve the overlap along the continental shelf.

The group will work toward a final agreement covering the border area, which lies north of Alaska and the Canadian provinces of Yukon and the Northwest Territories, the two countries said.

The negotiations come amid a rise in cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic Sea, where they eye mineral resources and new shipping routes uncovered by melting ice amid rising temperatures.

The dispute between Canada and the United States in the Beaufort Sea is a long-standing disagreement over the maritime border off the coast of Yukon and Alaska, an ecologically sensitive region that has several oil and gas deposits.

The boundary dispute is rooted in the 1825 Anglo-Russian treaty, which was inherited by the United States in 1867 and Canada in 1880. The two countries have different interpretations of the treaty’s meaning.

The U.S. government had unveiled actions last year to make nearly 3 million acres of the area “indefinitely off limits” for oil and gas leasing as President Joe Biden tried to balance his goals of decarbonizing the U.S. economy and preserving pristine wilderness.

The administration’s action built on an Obama-era ban and effectively closed off U.S. Arctic waters to oil exploration.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington D.C. and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)