U.S. is running out of time to ratify UNCLOS and submit a claim to CLCS for extended continental shelf in the Arctic

Gaining exclusive sovereign rights over the full potential U.S. Arctic extended continental shelf will prove difficult, however, due to the close proximity among the United States, Russia, and Canada and the potential for overlapping claims to extended continental shelves. The Russian Federation was the first UNCLOS party to submit an extended continental shelf claim to the CLCS.⁹⁷ The CLCS rejected Russia’s initial 2001 submission but permitted it to revise and resubmit its claim. Russia anticipates submitting its revised claim for its extended shelf in the Arctic by the end of the year.⁹⁸ Denmark, Iceland, and Norway also submitted claims to the CLCS⁹⁹ and Canada must do so by December 2013.¹⁰⁰ This will leave the United States as the only Arctic nation that has not formally claimed the outer limits of an extended continental shelf. Moreover, if Russia accepts the commission’s recommendations, Russia’s extended continental shelf boundaries are final and binding (although it is not clear who is so bound). If the United States accedes and eventually perfects a claim to the outer limit of its extended shelf with the CLCS, there is a chance that its extended continental shelf will overlap with Russia’s. UNCLOS allows for two (or more) legitimate outer limit claims but leaves it to the parties to agree to terms that split the overlapping extended continental shelf between them. The United States has provided observations on submissions by two other states, but, as a non-party, it cannot submit a claim under Article 76.¹⁰¹