Black Sea sliver may decide Nabucco
fate By Vladimir Socor
On March 22 and 25, Romania's Foreign
Affairs Minister Cristian Diaconescu announced on
television that a "legal dispute"
("litigium") exists between Romania and
Bulgaria over the delimitation of their maritime
border, continental shelf, and exclusive economic
zones in the Black Sea.
The dispute
affects, in one way or another, ExxonMobil's oil
and gas exploration plans in Bulgarian waters,
Gazprom's South Stream project, and the EU-backed
Nabucco project.
Diaconescu's initial
announcement generated some confusion until
Romanian diplomats intervened with clarifications.
The minister stated that the dispute over maritime
borders concerned an area of merely 17 square
kilometers; and he complained also
about Bulgaria's
treatment of its ethnic Romanian minority,
seemingly linking the two issues.
According to subsequent Romanian
clarifications, the disputed maritime area
measures some 350 square kilometers in a critical
location. It forms a triangle, centered on the
point at which Romania's, Bulgaria's, and Turkey's
respective exclusive economic zones converge.
Bucharest's follow-up statements no longer
mentioned the Romanian ethnic minority issue in
Bulgaria, but digressed into a further border
issue on the Danube, where the river's thalweg
(main channel, deepest watercourse) has apparently
shifted toward Bulgaria, inspiring Bucharest to
seek a corresponding shift of the riverine border
in Romania's favor.
In the Black Sea, the
disputed area overlaps with ExxonMobil's planned
offshore exploration area. The disputed area also
intersects South Stream's planned route on the
seabed of the Black Sea to the Bulgarian coast.
And it would (if Romania wins its claim) narrowly
connect Romania's exclusive economic zone directly
with Turkey's exclusive economic zone on the
seabed of the Black Sea, potentially enabling
Romania to link up with Turkey by an offshore
pipeline, instead of the overland Nabucco via
Bulgaria (see below).
According to
Romania's Foreign Affairs Ministry, two recent
developments prompted Bucharest to serve public
notice that this legal dispute exists. On January
31, Bulgaria announced its offshore oil and gas
exploration tender via European Union official
publications, staking out a 14,000 square
kilometer area that overlaps with Romania's
continental shelf claim.
On March 19 (the
direct trigger), the CEOs of Gazprom and
Bulgargaz, Aleksei Miller and Dimitar Gogov,
agreed in Moscow to promptly designate a company
for mapping out South Stream's Bulgarian section,
starting with the pipeline's landfall point on the
Black Sea coast.
Romania is in a position
to delay both of those projects, simply by
announcing that a portion of that area forms the
object of a legal dispute between Romania and
Bulgaria. This could result in protracted
negotiation and litigation between the two
countries.
Alternatively, it could force
re-mapping and other adjustments to a
Bulgarian-ExxonMobil offshore exploration project,
as well as to South Stream. The existence of a
legal dispute would require these projects to stay
out of the disputed area, at least pending its
adjudication.
As a third possibility,
Gazprom and Bulgaria would have to apply for
Romanian consent in order to lay the pipeline
through the now-disputed area.
According
to Romania's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
Bogdan Aurescu, the Nabucco pipeline might run
from Turkey directly to Romania on the seabed,
bypassing Bulgaria. This could become a
possibility, if Romania wins the seabed portion
that would connect its exclusive economic zone
with Turkey's.
This "if" seems a big if in
the first place; but even in that eventuality,
there is no basis for assuming that Caspian gas
suppliers or transit pipeline owners would
consider such an idea. As an attempt to build
Romanian negotiating leverage against Bulgaria, it
lacks credibility.
On the other hand,
forcing a delay to South Stream (even at the
perception level, which matters primarily with
South Stream) would help Nabucco to survive as
"Nabucco-West" from Bulgaria to Vienna. This could
be the Trans-Anatolia project's continuation
pipeline into EU territory.
Romania and
Bulgaria have been negotiating since 1994 over
delimiting their maritime border, continental
shelf, and exclusive economic zones. By various
counts, either 14 or 17 rounds of
Romanian-Bulgarian negotiation have been held
since 1994 at the expert level. Based on the
Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982), the two
countries seek to advance from the territorial
waters limit of 12 nautical miles to the 200
nautical miles limit of exclusive economic zones.
Their respective claims overlap in the
small but key area that Romania has now officially
declared as "disputed". In the wake of this
demarche, Bucharest and Sofia both declare that
they seek a bilateral solution, as soon as
possible.
Sofia has both good reasons
(ExxonMobil offshore exploration) and bad reasons
(South Stream) for seeking a quick bilateral
solution with Bucharest. The Romanian side,
however, has no apparent reason to hurry; instead,
it is well placed to stall the bilateral
negotiations and go to international litigation.
According to the Foreign Affairs Ministry,
Romania is prepared to take the dispute to the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague,
to the International Tribunal for the Law of the
Sea in Hamburg, or to some arbitration court.
In 2009, Romania won its case against
Ukraine at the ICJ after many years of litigation
over delimiting the continental shelf and
exclusive economic zones in the Black Sea. The
court awarded Romania 9,700 square kilometers, out
of the 12,200 in dispute with Ukraine. State
Secretary Aurescu litigated that case for Romania.
That success colors Bucharest's attitude in the
dispute it has just declared with Bulgaria.
In Sofia, the Foreign Affairs Ministry
called in the Romanian ambassador for
explanations, then issued a conciliatory
statement. Satisfied that Romania does not pose
"territorial claims", Bulgaria is prepared to
negotiate for a quick resolution of the dispute
"in the spirit of both countries' membership in
the European Union". Prime Minister Boiko Borissov
and Bulgarian diplomats are responding in
conciliatory tones.
If Bucharest persists
with its current approach, Sofia will be playing
the weaker hand. Sofia's tactics seem designed to
let Bucharest look unreasonable in the eyes of
Brussels.
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