U.S. could rely on bilateral treaties as an alternative to UNCLOS regime
The United States can successfully pursue its national interests regarding its extended continental shelf by negotiating on a bilateral basis with nations with which it shares maritime borders to delimit and mutually recognize each other’s maritime and ECS boundaries.
Quicktabs: Arguments
In any case, it would have been quite simple to build an alternative to the LOST. In 1980 Congress passed the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Act to provide interim protection for American miners until Congress ratified an acceptable LOST. The act could simply be amended to create a permanent process for recording seabed claims and resolving con- flicts. Such legislation could then be coordinated with that of the other leading industrialized states. In September 1982 Britain, France, Germany, and the United States signed the Reciprocating States Agreement to provide for arbitration of competing claims. Such an informal system could have been upgraded into a formal treaty, authorizing each nation to oversee its own companies’ activities and creating a mechanism for resolving conflicts. No international bureaucracy would have been necessary.
Moreover, what state is going to complain if the United States claims an extended continental shelf in the Arctic – certainly not any of our Arctic neighbors? We have an existing maritime boundary with the Russian Federation in the North Pacific Ocean, the Bering and Chukchi Seas, and the Arctic Ocean, which is being provisionally applied through an exchange of diplomatic notes pending ratification by the Russian Duma.14 And talks are ongoing to resolve our long-standing but rather small maritime dispute with Canada in the Beaufort Sea. In May 2010, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a clear message to Washington to begin serious discussion on the issue, indicating that there was no reason why Canada and the United States could not resolve the ongoing boundary dispute “as economic partners and best friends, sharing the longest border in the world.”15 Talks to resolve the dispute began in July 2010.16 More importantly, a careful read of the 2002 USGS Arctic report notes that the overwhelming majority of likely oil and gas reserves in the Arctic are located on land, in the 12 nm territorial sea or within the 200 nm EEZ of one of the littoral nations. Most of the Arctic oil and gas reserves are in areas under U.S. and Russian control, respectively. And a strong Navy is the best insurance to keep “outside bidders” like China from infringing on our right to exploit the natural resources on the U.S. extended continental shelf.