Monthly Archives: March 2023

The President of the United States of America announced a decision (13 March 2023) to withdraw from disposition by oil or gas leasing for a time period without specific expiration the areas designated as the Beaufort Planning Area of the Outer Continental Shelf. According to the memorandum published by the White House, the withdrawal prevents consideration of withdrawn areas for any future oil or gas leasing for purposes of exploration, development, or production, but nothing in this withdrawal affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas. The Memorandum for the Secretary of the Interior is available here. This comes after the U.S. Interior Department issued a Record of Decision regarding the proposed Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (source). 

On 17 January 2023 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore confirmed that Singapore has completed its domestic legal processes to ratify the bilateral instruments which make up the 2022 Expanded Framework Agreements with Indonesia, namely, the Agreement on the Realignment of the Boundary between the Jakarta Flight Information Region (FIR) and the Singapore FIR, the Treaty for the Extradition of Fugitives and the Defence Cooperation Agreement. This follows Indonesia’s ratification of the FIR Agreement in September 2022 and the Extradition Treaty and DCA in December 2022. Consistent with the 2022 Exchange of Letters, Singapore and Indonesia will exchange formal notifications of completion and “jointly seek approval from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the arrangements under the FIR Agreement, to enable the simultaneous entry into force of all three agreements on a mutually agreed date”.

On 14 February 2023, the Russian Federation submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), in accordance with Article 76, paragraph 8, of the Convention, and with reference to its Submission of 20 December 2001, and of it Partial Revised submission of 3 August 2015 (with addenda submitted on 31 March 2021) in respect of the Arctic Ocean, information on the limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of its territorial sea is measured in respect of the southeastern part of the Eurasian Basin in the Arctic Ocean. An Executive Summary of the Partial Revised Submission (2023) is available. This partial revised submission addresses one of the CLCS recommendations issued in February 2023 (previously reported), namely that the outer limits of the continental shelf in the southern part of the Amundsen Basin should be defined in a partial revised submission for this area. This represented the third partial revised submission Russia has submitted to the CLCS, of which, to-date, two concern the Arctic Ocean.