Existing Arctic regime, including UNCLOS, does not provide enough legal certainty and stability for business interests

There are economic considerations that also weaken the formalists' argument for the effectiveness of international law. First, because the legal regime for the Arctic is mostly made up of “soft law” that has no means of enforcement by international sovereigns, there no possibility that private sector actors (like oil companies and shipbuilders) will follow or consider soft law norms.⁸³ In fact, there may be evidence to suggest that business objectives may be congruent with national ones, especially if a nation's corporations and military view the Arctic as the key to future greatness, will CEOs be any more inclined to follow international law when their interests and the interests of their states are more or less the same?⁸⁴ Secondly, the current regime may be unable to consider, let alone regulate, certain complex inter-corporation and inter-  country partnership agreements that pose unique issues regarding profit-sharing, liability, responsibilities for security, and other important items.⁸⁵ Thirdly, the Arctic's legal uncertainty has chilled⁸⁶ economic development: Renowned financial services company Ernst & Young have noted that Arctic exploration is “not for the faint of heart” because of “exceptionally long project lead times” and “overlapping/competing economic sovereignty claims”.⁸⁷ An even more telling example can be found by surveying lease sale areas off the coast of Alaska: very few plots along the disputed US-  Canada border in the Beaufort Sea have been leased, as opposed to areas farther away from the boundary line.⁸⁸ This Author concludes that oil companies hesitate to develop and explore in the Arctic because of not just the inherent environmental and economic risks, but given the nature of the EEZs, the claims to the CLCS, the political tension and the general legal uncertainty, it would not be hard to wager that oil companies simply do not want to invest in an area if there is a possibility that a foreign government could simply claim that area or use a favorable ruling to divest that corporation of its exploration or drilling rights.