London, Oct. 17: Denmark has launched an extraordinary bid for ownership of the North Pole, one of the world?s last untapped sources of oil and natural gas.

In recent decades the remote polar region has largely been left to explorers and tourists. Now, however, effects of climate change have dramatically raised the stakes.

Scientists estimate that the ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting at a rate of 3 per cent a year ? allowing the economic exploitation of a region that is almost totally unexplored.

In the words of one Danish scientist: ?The Vikings hope to get there first.?

At present, the North Pole is considered international territory. The Danish bid is based on new geological data claiming to show that the Pole and Greenland ? owned by Denmark since 1814 ? are linked by a 1,240km underwater mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge.

This would give Copenhagen a legitimate right to the North Pole?s abundant natural resources. According to the UN Convention of the Sea, countries can claim economic rights to waters up to 370km from their shores. Yet the Danish claim, which will be formally made once a survey of the ridge is complete, has prompted an unseemly scramble among Canadian and Russian scientists who are busy preparing rival arguments of sovereignty.

Canada first claimed the North Pole in the late 1950s and an international tribunal later ruled that if no disputing claim was made within 100 years it would become Canadian territory. But while most atlases place the region within Canadian borders, legal sovereignty has never been granted.

That hasn?t stopped the Danes getting excited. ?The North Pole is one of the only virgin territories left on the globe,? said Torquil Meedon, a senior official at Denmark?s ministry of science and technology. Who knows how valuable rights to the Pole could be 100 years from now??