Oil lurks beneath EU-Norway snow crab clash
Dominique Faget/AFP via Getty Images
A dispute between the EU and Norway over snow crabs in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic is being seen as a proxy fight for an even more valuable prize: oil.
In an unusually dramatic series of clashes above the Arctic Circle, Norway seized one EU vessel this year and expelled several others from its waters, insisting that the European Commission has no right to issue fishing licenses off the remote Svalbard islands governed by Oslo.