Talk:Outer Continental Shelf

Page needs more work

I have wikified some of the links on this fairly new page, and removed the 'deadend' tag. However, I noticed just today that the information used by whomever initiated the page, and quoted extensively on the article page, is somewhat more narrow than just the United States OCS perspective, which is already fairly narrow in that it is does not yet offer a worldwide perspective. The main text of the article appears to be quoted from a U.S. federal government page ([1]) that covers only the Gulf Of Mexico Region (GOMR), and thus does not even cover the other regions within the Minerals Management Service of the US Dept. of the Interior (Alaska, Atlantic coast, Pacific coast, etc.) N2e 16:02, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Article has been substantially cleaned up now, map added, etc. Still could use more work; but it is no longer a new stub class. N2e 22:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

US Gvmt Map of OCS is available

This article REALLY needs a map. {{Reqmap}} Voila; I just found one. There is a great, almost-ready-to-use-in-WP map of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf lands at http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/guide/ocs/index.cfm It needs a little editing work to take some specific text off of the top of the map, but that text is over Canadian lands so it should be easy to simply cut it off for someone who is familiar with Wikipedia graphic insertion and GIF file editing. There is a larger-size version available by clicking the graphic on the main page. N2e 22:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Image:Outer Continental Shelf map.png Jackaranga 05:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Map has been added to article. Thanks to Jackaranga for building the map and putting it into the Wikipedia commons! N2e 22:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Article scope

This article must remain as US-specific. `'Míkka 02:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Why? Are you asserting that the US is the only country that has an outer continental shelf? Bellthorpe (talk) 14:09, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Imperial Nautical Mile

The US Federal government source, cited extensively in the article, says for Louisiana: "Louisiana is extended 3 imperial nautical miles (imperial nautical mile = 6080.2 feet) seaward of the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured." Thus, for now at least, until another verifiable source is found for some different assertion, it is correct to leave the word "imperial" in the article. I have thus reverted the edit made byUser:Gene Nygaard. Please feel free to further research "imperial nautical miles" and improve the wikilinks and information in this article. I am guessing, but do not know, that perhaps the "imperial" nautical mile is related to an older French unit of measure, since a great deal of Louisiana state law is based on the Napoleonic code. N2e 22:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

One author. Not a statute. Just plain wrong. Maybe some English-born author using a loose and incorrect meaning of the word sometimes found there.

Show me whose empire it was defined for, and when?

In particular, Louisiana was never a part of the British empire.

The leagues of the French empire weren't connected to any mile of 6080.2 English feet. Nor of the Spanish empire, the other possibility when it comes to Louisiana.

The UK nautical mile was, and still is (even if that isn't the nautical mile most used in the modern UK), statutorily defined as 6080 feet, exactly. Not "0.2 ft" more.

So it must be the "American empire", eh? But we don't use the term "imperial" on Wikipedia to describe any units of the "American empire". Gene Nygaard 23:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

The 6080.2 ft mile is strictly an American unit. And it isn't "imperial feet" that make it up either. This unit was discontinued in 1954. At that time, the American foot was defined differently from that of various other countries, at exactly 1/0.999998 of the current international foot adopted later in 1959, whereas for example, the English foot of that time was roughly 0.999998 times the modern international foot; the U.S. and imperial feet thus differed by about four parts per million. Gene Nygaard 23:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, see Imperial unit. Pay special attention to the "hatline" there:

• This article is about post-1824 imperial units, see also English unit, U.S. customary units or Avoirdupois.

Gene Nygaard 23:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Not only that, but using something as a source doesn't mean you are bound to use the terminology they use. Especially when it is dubious, when it might be obsolete usage, or any of a host of other reasons. Your source is a source for the fact that the miles with respect to Louisana are miles equal to 6080.2 of some unspecified feet. It isn't a source requiring us to call those miles "imperial" nautical miles.

U.S. Federal Register notice of July 1, 1959 discusses the 1954 redefinition of the U.S. nautical mile from 6,080.2 ft to 1,852 m. The Weights and Measures act of 1878 may be a source for the 6080 foot British nautical mile, need to look into that. Maybe it is sourced at nautical mile, but wouldn't be surprised if it is not. Gene Nygaard 23:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Gene, I am not defending which country Louisiana's use of the imperial nautical mile came from. Frankly, I don't know, and I don't really care. And I'm not going to do original research on the definitions of units of measure to determine the answer. Some editor prior to me added that text to the article, and did so correctly as far as I can discern from a correctly cited US Federal Government source at the US Dept. of the Interior. If you want to remove the word "imperial" from the article you should do it only with a valid citation from a verifiable source, not with the mere assertion that I, or any other editor, needs to do some research in order to satisfy you. Thus, in my considered opinion, you have now made the article incorrect in that it is not at all clear that the Louisiana jurisdicition is measured in the units now listed in the article following your edits. That is to say, if the folks at the U.S. Department of the Interior assert, in a verifible source, that the Louisiana jurisdiction onto the landward extent of the continental shelf is measured differently than the jurisdiction of the other states, and especially given the rather odd history of Louisiana law having French roots long before it had American roots (i.e., prior to the 1803 Lousiana Purchase from France), I am going to go with the Federal source, as cited in the article and easily readable by following the link, rather than your opinion on the correct meanings of the units of measurement. I have no doubt you are an expert in units of measurement, but I believe the key point to be one of statute or treaty, not measurement definitions.

Thus, I will revert your second reversion back in another day or so unless you do it yourself first.

(If you actually want to do research that does not fail the WP:OR Wikipedia policy test, then you would probably have to find sources in current Louisiana statutes, or in Federal statutes or treaties related to the Louisiana Purchase. It is not sufficient to merely state that English or American units are correct, and have been since some particular year. While that may be true, it would not tell us that the agreement between the US Federal gvmt. and the State of Louisiana was not different at the time Lousiana became a US State. It also would not tell us what the relevant law says about the situation today.)

Note to all: I am continuing to assume good faith on Gene Nygaard's part, but in my strongly held view, Gene should not make such a change to this article unless based on citable sources, from Louisiana law or elsewhere. It does not seem correct to just revert merely because GN doesn't like what the Federal government says about Lousiana's seaward jurisdiction being measured in "imperial miles." The source is what the source is, until a different source is found. N2e 13:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

You are suffering under some pretty convoluted notions of what is involved in both verifiability and in original research.

First of all, before there we even need to worry about verifiability, we need to consider relevance to the article involved. A charactization of these miles as "imperial" isn't relevant to this article. What is relevant is that someone considers there to be more than one precise definition involved.

In the second case, I have provided you with verification of what these particular miles are.

If you need even more specificity in that regard, use this specific reference cited in nautical mile:

• Louis E. Barbrow and Lewis V. Judson (1976). "Appendix 4 The international nautical mile" (PDF). Weights and Measures Standards of the United States, A brief history. NIST Physics Laboratory. Retrieved 2007-08-02.

And if instead you just want to see the Federal Register notice which is quoted on pages 30-31 in that publication which is also known National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 447, it can be found here at either of these links:

• http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdoc59-5442.pdf
• http://gssp.wva.net/html.common/refine.pdf

But since they aren't relevant to the article itself, there is no reason to include that verification within the article. 14:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, just because a misstatement can be verified, that doesn't mean it needs to be included in the article. Just more of the general relevance issues, really. There is lots of misinformation out there that can be verified from what Wikipedia jargon calls "reliable sources", but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be used in Wikipedia.

In this particular case, there is no plausible explanation for that aberrant terminology. If you cannot identify even an empire to which the adjective imperial applies here, and if you cannot show that the specifically identified unit (exactly 6080.2 feet long in this case) was ever used by any such "empire", then there is no reason to take this as something carved in stone to be used by everyone else in perpetuity, just because some low-level government clerk once wrote it this way. Gene Nygaard 14:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

User:MJCdetroit and User:Jimp have much improved the article by accurately handling the size of the Louisiana jurisdicition rather than just deleting the word "imperial" as had previously been done by User:Gene Nygaard. Contra Gene Nygaard, the size of the strip of ocean that has U.S. State jurisdiction is relevant to the article, and should be correct since this is an encyclopedia. MJCdetroit and Jimp have now made the article factually accurate while avoiding the use of the "imperial" word. Kudos. N2e 13:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

It was already "accurately" handled before I ever edited it. It was just confusingly so, using terminology that in both unusual and incorrect, and which was thus confusing. Do a Google search for "imperial nautical miles" and what do you find? Something like 14 hits, all obviously having a single common source because of the shared terminology. It isn't terminology ever used by anyone. It wasn't correct. And what MJCdetroit and Jimp have done is merely expanding on what was already here, and what I had already pointed out here and on Lightmouse's talk page--the relevant part, the thing you didn't understand, N2e. And, their changes haven't really clarified all that much.

In particular, if this distinction is something worth making in the article, then the values given in kilometers need to be such that they reflect the distinction as well. The people who ignore one set of units deserve to get basically the same information as those who ignore another set of units. The changes by MJCdetroit and Jimp do not accomplish that. I will edit the article accordingly. Gene Nygaard 12:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The lightmouse edit

User:lightmouse erased the salient point that the Louisiana miles were different, and also didn't provide near enough precision. These are not measured quantities; they are defined quantities. Gene Nygaard 00:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is the Louisiana OCS limit so small?

I have located an article that tells the political history of the formation of the Lousiana state-sovereign continental shelf lands, and why it is so significantly smaller than the state zone for Texas. I will try to locate an online source and post the relevant facts and a citation. In case I don't get back to it, here is the citation (sans URL) in standard WP citation format: Rivet, Ryan (Summer 2008), "Petroleum Dynamite", Tulanian, pp. 20–27 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |date accessed= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) N2e (talk) 17:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Finally getting back with an online link to the article mentioned above. It is here that you can locate the online back issues archive; click on 'back issues' then locate the Summer 2008 (June 2008) issue, then navigate to the article Petroleum Dynamite. The most relevant quotation is on page 26 and starts with the text: "In 1948, when [Huey Long's] brother Earl Long took office, there was a question as to the ownership of mineral rights offshore. ..." It is a very interesting story and likely relevant to why the OCS is defined so very differently off Louisiana than, say, Florida and Texas. I was unable to obtain a specific permalink that would allow a single-click directly and only to the relevant article. N2e (talk) 14:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is a more lengthy quotation from the above cited source: N2e (talk) 14:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

"In 1948, when [ Louisiana-governor Huey Long’s ] brother Earl Long took office, there was a question as to the ownership of mineral rights offshore. Long appointed a special assistant attorney general to prepare the state’s case.

" “The debate was about where the shoreline was, and how far offshore should the state retain mineral rights,” says Smith. Both Texas and Florida had 100 percent of the rights (including revenues from oil and gas exploration) for 10 miles beyond their shorelines. Under its original acquisition terms with the federal government in 1803, Louisiana’s mineral rights extended out for only three miles. When approached by the Long administration, the federal government said it was willing to discuss a compromise and split of the royalties in the area beyond three miles.

"Acting under the advice of the assistant attorney general, Long demanded the same deal granted to Texas and Florida, says Smith. “And Harry Truman slammed the door, and said you don’t get any. It was a bluff that didn’t work.”

"The estimated cost [to the state of Louisiana] of that failed bluff is more than $100 billion in 60 years. Without the revenue stream enjoyed by Texas, when oil prices plummeted in the mid 1980s and the bottom fell out of the industry, Louisiana could not give the kinds of tax breaks and incentives that would keep oil companies from consolidating to Houston.

"Recently, there have been modifications to the arrangements where the state receives a percentage of the royalties from three to six miles, and since Hurricane Katrina, the state now receives a portion of the royalties for new development beyond six miles."

BOEMRE

The 3 References to MMS are now broken links since the establishment of BOEMRE, which replaced MMS. I made the correction of adding BOEMRE's info and link but now I believe their authority is broader than the Article indicates. Rengewwj (talk) 16:47, 8 November 2010 (UTC)