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Stevens, Bush concur on Law of the Sea United States has not ratified a U.N. Convention that includes international rules for extending continental shelf jurisdiction Alan Bailey Petroleum News
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has issued a statement supporting President Bush’s May 15 appeal to the U.S. Senate to approve U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea during the current session of Congress.
“The United States is the world’s largest maritime power, and our country also has one of the longest coastlines in the world. As a result, we have an enormous interest in the protection of the oceans and their resources,” Stevens said. “… The Law of the Sea Treaty would allow member nations to lay claim to all bottom resources on their continental shelves beyond 200 miles. Two-thirds of our nation’s OCS is located off Alaska, and if we ratify this accord, the United States could lay claim to a substantial area north and east of the Bering Strait.”
International treaty The Convention on the Law of the Sea consists of an international treaty establishing rules for all aspects of ocean use, including the rights of passage in or over ocean waters; the territorial sovereignty of coastal nations; the geographical limits of territorial seas and economic exclusion zones; and the environmental protection of the oceans. The convention includes procedures for the peaceful resolution of disputes regarding the use of the world’s oceans. The convention also requires that the International Seabed Authority, consisting of representatives from the states that are party to the convention, administers mining in the deep seabed beyond national jurisdictions.
The United States was deeply involved in the negotiations leading to the formulation of the convention. But when the convention opened for signature in 1982, President Reagan objected to some of the convention provisions relating to deep seabed mining. In the early 1990s strong pressure to resolve the remaining problems with the convention led to the negotiation of a convention amendment. In 1994 President Clinton said that this amendment had fixed the deep seabed mining issues.
Went into effect 1994 In 1994 the Law of the Sea Convention went into effect, followed in 1996 by the amendment addressing the deep-sea mining controversy. Since then 153 nations and entities such as the European Union have ratified the convention; 127 nations and entities have ratified the amendment.
But so far the United States has ratified neither the convention nor the amendment. U.S. critics of the treaty have argued that the convention undermines U.S. sovereignty and that customary international law already protects U.S. interests. Some have also expressed concern about the potential for the terms of the convention to compromise U.S. security interests.
But U.S. proponents of the convention say that these concerns are unfounded and that the U.S. needs the protections under the convention for the ocean passage of both military and commercial shipping.
In February 2004 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously in favor of ratification of the convention and the 1994 amendment. But, despite the support of the Bush administration, the debate on the Law of the Sea stalled in the Senate and the question of whether the United States should ratify the treaty remains unresolved.
Extended continental shelf Of particular concern, as time passes, are provisions in the convention for the possible extension of a coastal nation’s legally recognized continental shelf beyond the 200-mile limit of that nation’s economic exclusion zone. On the continental shelf the nation would maintain sovereign rights over resource development, including oil and gas development. Consequently countries such as Russia and Canada that have ratified the convention have been scrambling to claim extended areas of continental shelf (see “Global warming, new technology heat up race for Arctic hydrocarbon resources” in the April 1, 2007, edition of Petroleum News).
Under the terms of the convention, the edge of a nation’s continental shelf can be defined using parameters such as the geometry of the edge of a deep ocean basin and the presence of sedimentary rocks. A nation can submit evidence supporting an extended continental shelf to a Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, consisting of 21 members elected by the parties to the convention. The commission evaluates the nation’s claim and makes recommendations on what the outer limit of the nation’s continental shelf should be. If the nation disagrees with the commission’s recommendation, it can submit a revised claim.
Continental shelf limits established by a nation and supported by a recommendation from the commission will be considered binding and final.
The question of the aerial extent of the U.S. continental shelf has major ramifications for Alaska and the United States. In March Mead Treadwell, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, told the Resource Development Council in Anchorage that, by including possible additions to the continental shelf of Alaska and some other states, it might be possible to add territory equivalent to two Californias to the United States. Russia has already claimed 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean under the Law of the Sea, Treadwell said.
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