45 



for industrialization. This is understandable. But whether such rapid 

 industrialization is a sound policy for the management of the re- 

 sources of "Spaceslii}) Earth," or whether, instead, the developing 

 nations should carefully evaluate it and beware of the fate to which 

 it might lead, should be a matter of meticulous international assess- 

 ment and decision-making. The developing nations have the op- 

 portunity to witness the results of experiments already performed 

 for them by the developed nations, and lessons they can learn before 

 the fact. Nevertheless, it is also understandable that petroleum com- 

 panies operating for these nations should find the lack of restraints 

 less costly, more profitable, less restrictive, and the cause of fewer 

 headaches than similar operations off the shores of developed states. 

 The question must be raised about the responsibility of those organ- 

 izations for adopting their own self-policing methods and educating 

 the developing nations in the necessity of preserving the environment 

 for their own good and for the ultimate benefit of all mankind. 



There is no reason to believe that technologically the industry 

 cannot conduct its business and preserve the ocean ecology in a system 

 of mutual benefit. The ocean has become the focus of man's attention 

 and hope, not merely for its mineral and petroleum resources, but 

 more so for its increasing importance as a source of food, a possible 

 future habitat, and a major source of th6 Earth's weather systems and 

 their life-giving processes. There are other tenants using the con- 

 tinental shelf, and their joint activities need to be mutually com- 

 patible. ''^ 



One point of view is that land resource exploitation deserves first 

 priority ; it may be in the ultimate interest of all mankind to pursue 

 the land areas and explore their subsurface thoroughly, leaving the 

 ocean as clean as possible for as long as possible. Until the continents 



''- In a publication entitled "Petroleum, Drilling and Leasing on the Outer Continental 

 Shelf — A Summary," (May 1966, page 20), the Department of the Interior describes the 

 otlier tenants of the continental shelf regions as follows : 



"One of the singular aspects of the Offshore Louisiana situation is that the oil industry 

 has enjoyed extensive and largely undisturbed use of the area for over a decade, during 

 wliich time it has put up over a thousand permanent structures which would In varying 

 degrees interfere with other uses of the shelf, the overlying sea, and the air above it. This 

 was possible to do because by and large, and almost fortuitously, no other prospective 

 tenants asserted a significant need to use the area for their own purposes. 



"This is not to say that operators have not had trouble with merchantmen and fishing 

 boats bumping into their platforms, (the frequency is increasing) or by having ships' 

 anchors dragged over their pipelines. These difficulties are of a historic nature and a large 

 body of navigational law and practice has been evolved to enable the traditional users of 

 the sea to share its benefits with the least amount of damage to everyone. 



"What is unique about .the present situation is that of the 200,000-plus square miles of 

 Continental Shelf and sea area adjacent to the United States, that portion off the coast 

 of Louisiana is the only part that has experienced significant drilling activity, and it is 

 also the on.y part that is not almost completely claim-staked by other users. Around the 

 entire length of the remaining coastline, there is scarcely a square mile that is not 

 being used for some purpose and usually for more than one purpose. The chief tenant 

 is the Department of Defense, but not in every case. There are bombing and gunnery 

 ranges, test and calibration ranges, carrier operating areas, submarine operating 

 areas, torpedo firing ranges, transit lanes, and vast and complicated underwater sound 

 surveillance systems tied to each other and to the shore by a network of cables. On the 

 Atlantic and Pacific Coasts there are also a great many more commercial shipping routes 

 than in the Gulf, and the number of clear days is measurably less. There are commercial 

 cables, oyster beds, and fishing shoals to be considered and a growing number of privately 

 owned submersible craft operating in the relatively shallow waters above the shelf. More- 

 over, beauty-conscious dwellers along the shore are acutely sensitive to the spectacle of 

 oil rigs working offshore at any point within their range of sight. And because the entire 

 area is already in use, the entry of a new tenant cannot be easily accommodated because 

 of the "domino effect" produced upon adjacent areas. Therefore, as oil activity on the 

 Continental Shelf expands into these area^s. oil men and their government lessors are likely 

 to be faced with problems of a kind and dimension they have never really encountered 

 before. Their resolution will take much patient negotiating, and a large measure of 

 tolerance by all parties. The Continental Shelf and the sea and air above it may give the 

 appearance of being spacious and emoty, when in fact they are not. Far from being empty, 

 the Shelf deserves to be called our Crowded Frontier." 



