UNCLOS and Maritime Boundary Disputes in Areas of Hydrocarbon Potential: Oil Under Troubled Waters?

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is credited for promoting order in the world’s oceans. This article evaluates UNCLOS in the context of maritime boundaries in areas of hydrocarbon potential. It uses a dataset of 109 maritime boundaries and finds that the most frequent maritime boundary resolution methodology was not a negotiated delimitation agreement, but a solution only indirectly referenced by UNCLOS: a Joint Development Area agreement with prescriptive resource sharing. This study also discovered that disputes that involve states that have chosen to opt out of compulsory dispute resolution procedures are more likely to remain unresolved than otherwise.