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| Mexico |
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| Mexico takes legal steps for GOM oil claim |
| By AFX December 17, 2007 01:02:00 AM |
| | The Mexican government said it has taken legal steps to solidify its claim and help start oil exploration in a section of the Gulf of Mexico outside standard territorial limits.
The area lies outside both the United States and Mexico's 200-mile (320-kilometer) territorial limits, a gap known as "the doughnut hole."
The Mexican government said it filed a brief with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf seeking recognition for Mexico's right to the area.
"Once the commission issues its recommendation, Mexico's extended continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico will be definitive. ... Mexico will be able to fully exercise its sovereign rights to exploration and exploitation for natural resources in the zone," the Foreign Relations Department said in a news statement.
Most of the Gulf lies clearly within either the U.S. or Mexican territorial limits, but a gap exists where the two coasts are further apart.
The two nations divided up the area under a bilateral agreement signed in 2001, in which Mexico obtained rights to about 60 percent of the 6,500 square mile (16,835 square kilometer) gap.
The agreement was intended to sort out potentially lucrative rights to offshore oil exploration.
But both countries also agreed to a 10-year moratorium on drilling for studies on where any oil deposits might lie, in order to ensure both countries get an equal chance to tap into them.
It was unclear whether those studies have been finished, or whether Mexico might start drilling before the end of the moratorium period.
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