Legal certainty provided by UNCLOS is not a necessary condition for development of oil and gas resources with US EEZ
Even though approximately 20 percent of the only area of U.S. ECS that has been made available for lease by BOEM is currently under an active lease, the U.S. oil and gas industry has supported and will likely continue to support U.S. accession to UNCLOS in order to achieve even greater “certainty.” That is their prerogative, of course, and achieving a maximum amount of certainty is a legitimate and desirable goal for a capital-intensive commercial enterprise. However, the successful delimitation of the ECS in the western gap and the U.S. government’s continuing lease sales of ECS blocks would appear to have provided the certainty necessary for several major U.S. and foreign oil exploration companies to secure leases for the development of the U.S. ECS.
The Law of the Sea: Costs of U.S. Accession to UNCLOS ." Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, June 14, 2012. [ More (11 quotes) ]
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U.S. does not need to ratify UNCLOS to develop hydrocarbon resources beneath the ECS -- development is actively underway already and further development can occur thrigh bilateral agreements with neightboring countries.
Related Quotes:- Empirically, US companies have leased and developed oil development claims on ECS since 2001 without needing UNCLOS framework
- Legal certainty provided by UNCLOS is not a necessary condition for development of oil and gas resources with US EEZ
- US actively surveying extended continental shelf and can negotiate bilateral agreements with nations regarding boundaries outside UNCLOS framework
- US within its rights according to international law to develop on extended continental shelf
- U.S. resource extraction industries realize they have more to lose being outside of the treaty and have lined up in favor of it
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