America quietly grew by 400,000 square kilometers last month – almost twice the size of SPAIN

America has quietly grown 386,000 square kilometers in the past month – almost twice the size of Spain.

The US Department of State (DOS) has added six regions’ submerged offshore areas, or extended continental shelf (ECS), to the total landmass, allowing the country to claim more surrounding ocean floor area.

The seven regions include the Arctic, the Atlantic Ocean (east coast), the Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean (west coast), the Mariana Islands and two areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

DOS said the US has shifted the geographic coordinates that define the outer limits of the continental shelf in areas beyond 200 nautical miles offshore.

The largest area of ​​the US ECS is in the Arctic, while all ECS regions are approximately twice the size of California.

The Wilson Center think tank, based in Washington, DC, said the announcement has important implications for securing US territorial rights in the Arctic.

The ECS in the Arctic extends northward to a distance of 350 nautical miles (to the east) and more than 680 nautical miles (to the west) from the United States territorial sea baselines.

However, this shift does not violate a 1990 agreement with Russia on the maritime border running through the Bering Strait.

“There is no need for future negotiations with Russia because each country has demarcated the outer limit of its continental shelf, in accordance with the limit established in 1990 by the Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Maritime border. , which has been provisionally applied by agreement between the two countries,” the Wilson Center said.

State Department project director Brian Van Pay noted that Canada will likely have an overlapping claim, which could be negotiated in the future.

The State Department said the claim to the extended continental shelf was made in accordance with the provisions of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The US Senate never ratified that treaty, but after forty years the government announced the boundaries of the continental shelf.

The DOS led ECS efforts through the U.S. ECS Task Force, an interagency body of the U.S. government consisting of 14 agencies.

“The continental shelf is the extension of a country’s land area under the sea,” DOS shared in a statement.

“Like other countries, the United States has the right under international law to conserve and manage the resources and vital habitats on and under its ECS.”

Determining the ECS outer limits required data on the depth, shape and geophysical characteristics of the seabed and subsurface.

“Forty missions at sea, to areas we’ve never explored before, finding entire undersea mountains that we didn’t even know existed,” Van Pay told the Alaska public.

‘And if you add up all the time our scientists have spent at sea, that amounts to more than three years of data collection.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) collected and analyzed the necessary data.

Data collection began in 2003 and represents the largest offshore mapping effort ever undertaken by the United States.

“It has long been clear that the United States has major economic interests in an undersea area rich in oil, natural gas, minerals and marine life, over which it has sovereign rights under the law of the sea, as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention. , said the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan counsel and advisor on global affairs.

“It is also an important milestone that reflects U.S. commitment to the law of the sea, as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and as an aspect of advancing major U.S. interests in the Arctic and other regions. ‘