US claims seabed in strategic resources push

WASHINGTON: The United States has extended its claims on the ocean floor by an area twice the size of California, securing rights to potentially resource-rich seabeds at a time when Washington is ramping up efforts to safeguard supplies of minerals key to future technologies.

The so-called Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) covers about one million square km, predominantly in the Arctic and Bering Sea, an area of increasing strategic importance where Canada and Russia also have claims.