UK and Argentina clash over Falklands oil project as Hamburg tribunal starts
Argentina has told an international tribunal that Britain's approval of oil drilling off the Falkland Islands has dramatically deepened a sovereignty dispute that led to war four decades ago.
At the start of an historic legal clash at the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos), an Argentine legal team argued that the oil project must be suspended. The Sea Lion project in the North Falkland basin, led by the Israeli-firm Navitas and its British partner, Rockhopper, has the potential to triple the islands' GDP per capita.
Sovereignty dispute
Javier Oyarzábal, chief legal adviser to Argentina's ministry of foreign affairs, said that the 3,400 inhabitants of the Falkland islands, whose status as a British overseas territory is disputed by Buenos Aires, had no right to the resources around the south Atlantic archipelago.
[Argentina] respects the interests of the inhabitants of the islands and their way of life as enshrined in the Argentine constitution … What these British citizens do not have is a right to decide to which state the islands belong … These resources belong to the Argentine people.
Oyarzábal claimed that the oil money from the drilling would "finance the very military base and presence that sustains the UK's de facto control of the territory." He accused the UK of refusing to enter talks over the islands while pushing forward on the exploitation of its natural resources in a way that would entrench the status quo.
Legal arguments
Argentina has applied for arbitration by Itlos over the future of the project, claiming Britain's approval is in breach of a 1976 UN resolution calling on both parties to desist from unilateral action on the islands until the sovereignty dispute is settled. The country is requesting urgent provisional measures, including a commitment from the UK to "stop the drilling."
Addressing the panel's chair, Judge Maurice Kamga, from Cameroon, Oyarzábal said: "Mr President, the UK cannot have it both ways. It cannot invoke the sovereignty dispute to escape jurisdiction [of Itlos] while exploiting the natural resources of the disputed area as if a dispute had already been resolved in its favour."
Environmental concerns
Argentina claimed that the Sea Lion oil project risked an environmental disaster on Argentina's doorstep and that it would make the sovereignty dispute over the islands "more difficult or impossible" to resolve peacefully.
In the event of a blow out or spill, it is Argentina that would bear its consequences and be called upon to respond, not a state that is 12,700km away. More over the project lies within the search and rescue region for which Argentina is responsible.
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