U.S. industries view accession to the treaty as essential to doing business in international waters

U.S. industry and trade groups have fallen in behind the Law of the Sea Convention in order to be able to sponsor U.S.-based businesses in operations that involve territory within and beyond America’s Exclusive Economic Zone, and particularly in the Arctic, areas that call for “the maximum level of international legal certainty,” Clinton said at the May hearing.

To that end, American companies like Lockheed Martin, which has a 40-year history in sea floor exploration and is known as a “pioneer investor” under terms of the Convention, refuse to pursue exploitation of minerals as a U.S. operation without being party to the Convention, because it is the accepted international framework for obtaining secure title to deep seabed mining claims.