The area north of the Faroe Islands

The area north of the Faroe Islands is delimited by the 200 nautical mile limits of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, the mainland of Norway and Jan Mayen. Problems regarding overlapping claims have been solved through an agreement made with Iceland and Norway in 2006. The agreement sets out a procedure for handling the overlapping claims and determining future delimitation lines in the area taking into consideration the recommendations of the CLCS regarding the submissions made by each of the states.

In 2006, Norway sent its submission for an extended continental shelf to the CLCS and received the final recommendation by the CLCD on 27 March 2009, while Denmark and the Faroe Islands forwarded a submission on 29 April 2009 – the same day as Iceland. Denmark and the Faroe Islands received their recommendation on 11 March 2014 while Iceland had to wait until 10 March 2016. The final agreement on delimitation between Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark was signed on 30 October 2019 in Stockholm.

Strong co-operation between Jarðfeingi and GEUS

The Danish/Faroese submission documents an extended continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical mile limit north of the Faroe Islands of c. 90,000 km². The submission is a result of several years of work acquiring bathymetric and seismic data and interpreting them. In 2008 an ad hoc task force was set up under chairmanship of the Faroese Earth and Energy Directorate (Jarðfeingi) together with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Its purpose was to prepare the submission documents. It had representatives of national authorities and institutions from both Denmark and the Faroe Islands.

On 12 March 2014, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) finalized its examination of this Partial Submision by a recommendation that confirms the entitlement of the Kingdom of Denmark to an outer continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles north of the Faroe Islands.