Forgotten World (231): Rockall
It’s one of the regular weeks of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World – a look at parts of the world that too rarely feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 230 entries here.
Nobody lives on Rockall, a British overseas territory that is a rocky, volcanic outcrop located some 240 miles west of Scotland in the Atlantic Ocean. But the place has significant strategic significance since it sits in the midst of what could be a potentially vast and lucrative oil and gas field.
Consequently four nations – Britain, Ireland, Iceland and Denmark – have laid claim to the surrounding seabed in the Hatton-Rockall basin and these competing claims will have to be considered by the United Nations’ Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.