Accession to UNCLOS necessary before businesses will invest in lucrative but risky deepwater and arctic resource development

Recent discoveries by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) icebreaker Healy reveal that the U.S. continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean is much more extensive than originally thought. Only by becoming party to UNCLOS and participating in its processes, however, can the United States obtain secure title to these vast resources, adding some 290,000 square miles for sovereign resource exploitation.²⁹ Moreover, no American business enterprise is likely to invest the many billions of dollars necessary to develop a distant, deep-water off-shore oil or gas field, no matter how rich it might be, unless it has an undisputed right to do so under both domestic and international law.³⁰Kelly, Paul L. "Statement of Paul L. Kelly: Oversight hearing to examine the "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea". (March 24, 2004) ." Testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, March 24, 2004. [ More (2 quotes) ] In addition, the Convention's deep seabed mining provisions, as amended in 1994, would permit and encourage American businesses to pursue free-market- oriented approaches to deep ocean mining. The 1994 "Part XI Implementing Agreement" was crafted in such a way so as to protect the interests of investors and the United States.³¹ As a result, the off-shore oil and gas and mining industries all strongly support accession to UNCLOS. Economic self- sufficiency and development of off-shore ocean resources contribute directly to our national security.