AK HJR19

Urges the United States Senate to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

The Convention permits member nations to claim an exclusive economic zone up to 200 nautical miles from shore with sovereign rights to explore and develop living and nonliving resources, including deep sea mining

Ratification would allow the United States to claim approximately 1,000,000 square kilometers of Arctic Ocean seabed north of Alaska, an area about the size of California, currently being forfeited

The Arctic contains an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids representing more than one-fifth of the world's undiscovered recoverable oil and gas resources

161 nations have already ratified the Convention, the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff support ratification, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued favorable reports in 2004 and 2007, but the full Senate has not yet voted on ratification