Argentina’s government is preparing to ask an international maritime tribunal to halt the ‘Sea Lion’ offshore oil project near the Malvinas Islands after Britain indicated it would ignore a two-week deadline issued by President Javier Milei.
The deadline, set on September 29, is set to expire without London agreeing to stop activities linked to the Sea Lion project in the North Malvinas Basin, where Israel's Navitas Petroleum and Britain's Rockhopper Exploration plan to develop the major oil field.
Argentina has already initiated arbitration proceedings against Britain under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS/CONVEMAR in its Spanish acronym), according to the government, and is preparing to seek provisional measures from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS/TIDM in its Spanish acronym) in Hamburg.
The formal request is expected to be made next week when the deadline expires, according to local media reports.
Sea Lion
The Sea Lion field lies around 220 kilometres (137 miles) north of the islands, which are claimed by Argentina but have been controlled by Britain since 1833. They are known in the UK as the Falkland Islands and locally as las Islas Malvinas.
Milei said last month that he had instructed the Foreign Ministry and legal staff to initiate arbitration over what he called the "illegal" exploitation of Argentina’s resources through the project.
Navitas holds a 65 percent stake in Sea Lion, with Rockhopper owning the remaining 35 percent. Both companies maintain their plans to commence producing oil in 2028 after starting to drill early next year. The first stage aims at producing up to 55,000 barrels a day, later raising capacity to a daily 125,000 barrels.
Samuel Moody, the executive director of Rockhopper, said in a company report that the project is now entering "a decisive period."
Argentina’s government has questioned the advance of the project, telling the companies that they must choose between “operating illegally in a disputed territory or doing so profitably and safely in Argentina.”
Rockhopper maintains that Navitas is operating with licences it considers valid, granted by the Falkland Islands Government, saying the Argentine measures are “illegitimate and lacking jurisdictional justification.”
Pressure
The dispute has already begun to affect companies working on the project. Some oil-services providers have pulled out amid the threat of sanctions, including US giant Halliburton. Buenos Aires says it will penalise companies involved in what it considers illegal exploitation.
Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno highlighted those measures at a dinner hosted by the Argentine Council for International Relations in Buenos Aires this week.
Quirno said Argentina remained open to dialogue but pointed to the withdrawal of suppliers and the resulting fall in the share prices of Rockhopper and Navitas.
UK Ambassador to Argentina David Cairns was among the guests present. He left after the minister’s speech.
Britain has rejected Argentina's position and backed the development of the islands' natural resources. Rockhopper says the licences underpinning Sea Lion are valid and has described Argentina's measures as "illegitimate and legally unjustified.”
Argentina says that the project amounts to unlawful exploitation of non-renewable resources in waters around territory whose sovereignty is disputed.
Arbitration push
The government says it will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to impose provisional measures while the wider arbitration proceeds. The substantive dispute would be considered through the separate arbitration process established under Annex VII of the Law of the Sea convention.
The Foreign Ministry’s legal counsel office is in charge of this procedure, which is being led by Ambassador Mario Oyarzábal, an Argentine specialist in International Law.
Quirno recently confirmed that the arbitration process had been initiated, telling the TN news channel: “For the first time Argentina is submitting the dispute over the United Kingdom’s unilateral oil exploitation activities to an international tribunal.”
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, based in Hamburg, would not decide who has sovereignty over the Malvinas, but would rule on issues specifically linked to the Law of the Sea under the rules established by CONVEMAR.
It will be able to analyse whether a state may advance unilaterally with the exploitation of natural, non-renewable resources like oil in a maritime zone whose sovereignty is disputed between two countries.
Argentina is looking for the tribunal to adopt provisional measures while the arbitration unfolds. If the tribunal concedes them, the decisions are obligatory for the states involved.
Argentina has a judge on the 21-member tribunal, Frida María Armas Pfirter, who was elected vice-president of ITLOS on October 1.
A specialist in international maritime law, she has represented Argentina in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea dispute-settlement system since 2009 and served as coordinator of Argentina's National Commission on the Outer Limit of the Continental Shelf until 2023. Armas Pfirter was elected to the tribunal that same year for a nine-year term.
The tribunal has no British judges, although the United Kingdom may designate an ad hoc judge to intervene in this case.
– TIMES/PERFIL/NA
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