The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1964. N.Z.'s Continental Shelf

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1964. N.Z.'s Continental Shelf

The possibility of oil or gas under the sea near their coasts that might be reached by modem off-shore drilling practices has led several countries to legislate to establish and protect their rights to such areas and to control their exploitation. Britain legislated early this year for its share of the continental shelf under the North Sea. The Continental Shelf Bill introduced into the New Zealand Parliament last week applies similar principles. The continental shelf, a recent concept in international law and never before the subject of a multinational treaty, was defined in a convention adopted by the 1958 United Nations conference on the Law of the Sea. The New Zealand bill uses this definition and, incidentally, carries this country a little further into the metric system by using (as the convention does) metres as a legal unit of measurement. Having defined the continental shelf, the bill provides that all rights to the mineral and other non-living resources of the seabed and subsoil, and living organisms such as sponges and oysters, are vested in the Crown. The British Act makes an exception of coal, which is vested in the National Coal Board; in the New Zealand bill the Minister of Mines may grant a licence for the recovery of minerals under conditions he prescribes, and may require a payment of royalties to the Crown. In its chief purpose, the bill extends the Petroleum Act, 1937, with appropriate modifications, to petroleum (and presumably natural gas) under the continental shelf. The law applying to oysters within the territorial waters of New Zealand will apply to oysters on the continental shelf, and any other sedentary species of shellfish or sponges may be brought under the provisions of the Act by Order in Council. Criminal and civil law will apply to such things as drilling platforms erected above the continental shelf. Such platforms might, of course, be erected outside the present three-mile territorial limit. Legislation that establishes rights outside the three-mile limit will naturally rouse interest in the extent of fishing rights. The breadth of the territorial sea and the zone of exclusive fishing rights was the subject of discussion—and dispute—at the 1958 conference; and though agreement was reached on four proposed conventions, the questions of the territorial sea and fishing zones were left undecided. Other discussions have failed to find agreement, and the international picture today is of territorial waters of varied breadths, arbitrarily declared by individual nations.

The New Zealand Government has been under pressure from the fishing industry to extend New Zealand’s territorial waters. Though this subject is not strictly relevant to the Continental Shelf Bill, Its discussion in the House of Representatives would be an appropriate occasion for the Government to state its intentions about enlarging the three-mile (“ cannon shot ”) breadth of territorial waters, which is now acknowledged by many countries to be unrealistic. To avoid any possible reproach of “colonialism”, the Minister in charge of the bill should make it clear that New Zealand’s continental shelf legislation will apply to the Cook Islands only to protect the rights of the Cook Islands, and not in any way to benefit New Zealand.