ABSTRACT

Seven-tenths of the earth’s surface is covered by the ‘seven seas’. Until recently, nearly all of this vast area was under no national jurisdiction. Most coastal states claimed territorial waters extending only three nautical miles from shore (100 nautical miles are about 115 land miles or 185 km). But some states’ claims got larger and larger as expanding populations and industries increased the demand for fish and oil (petroleum). Disputes over fishing rights, and rights to seabed oil, became more frequent. United Nations conferences on the law of the sea (UNCLOS) in 1958 and 1960 failed to resolve most of these problems. However, the 1958 one produced a convention on the ‘continental shelf’ (the relatively shallow offshore part of the seabed); it was on this basis that the countries around the North Sea shared our rights to the oil and gas lying beneath it (22).