Bangladesh wins offshore claim
against Myanmar By Syed Tashfin
Chowdhury
DHAKA - Bangladesh has secured
its claims to a full 200-nautical-mile exclusive
economic zone in the Bay of Bengal, overcoming
Myanmar's claims to part of the territory by
winning a landmark verdict in its favor from the
United Nations International Tribunal for the Law
of the Sea (ITLOS).
In the first decision
of its kind by any court or tribunal, the March
14, 151-page, verdict also came down in favor of
Bangladesh regarding its claims to a substantial
part of the outer continental shelf beyond 200
nautical miles. The finding, which is final, ends
a long-running maritime dispute with neighbor
Myanmar and allows energy-starved Bangladesh to
press forward with exploration for offshore
hydrocarbon deposits.
"Through the
verdict," delivered in Hamburg of Germany, "we now
have an opportunity to
explore more prospective zones than the ones which
are nearer to Bangladesh's coastline," Hossain
Mansur, chairman of state-owned energy company
Petrobangla, told Asia Times Online.
The
finding represents an important achievement for
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who made resolving
the dispute with Myanmar a priority after leaving
prison in 2008 and before her election victory
later that year. The tribunal's verdict is
particularly encouraging to Dhaka as it seeks ways
to meet Bangladesh's energy requirements without
eroding its foreign exchange reserves.
A
key part of the tribunal's finding gives Dhaka
control over the entire 12-nautical-mile
territorial sea around Saint Martin's Island,
which lies around 10 kilometers from both
Bangladesh and Myanmar, which had earlier wanted
it to be cut into half. South Korea's Daewoo is
extracting gas not far from the island off
Myanmar's Arakan coast, which is separated from
Bangladesh's Teknaf district by the Naf river as
it flows to the sea.
Once Petrobangla has
a formal instruction from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Bangladesh along with a certified copy
of the ITLOS verdict, it will be able to determine
which exploration blocks fall within Bangladesh's
maritime territories, and then go forward with
bidding for exploration licenses by energy
companies, said Mansur. Both deep-water gas-blocks
and several shallow-water areas are affected.
As to the potential of the area, Mansur
said, "We would be able to comment properly on
that after we interpret the findings of the 2D
seismic survey that ConocoPhillips is carrying out
in the bay right now. We should have the report by
April."
ConocoPhillips, the lone
international oil company (IOC) at present
involved in deep-water hydrocarbon exploration for
Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal, was awarded
exploration rights over two deep-water gas blocks,
DS-08-10 and DS-08-11, following a bidding round
in February 2008. The ITLOS verdict will allow the
company to explore those areas fully, after being
limited until now by the border dispute.
Bangladesh had offered 28 offshore blocks, 20 of
them in deep water, but received a poor response
from other IOCs due to the dispute with Myanmar
and another with neighboring India.
The
Bay of Bengal has been perceived as a potential
source for hydrocarbon ever since India discovered
100 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2005-06 and
Myanmar discovered 7 trillion cubic feet of gas in
the Bay. India has also discovered oil.
In
a Foreign Ministry press release on March 14,
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said the
ITLOS ruling, by a 21 to 1 vote, concludes a
dispute that has "long delayed" exploration for
hydrocarbon in the Bay of Bengal for
"energy-starved Bangladesh".
The release
mentioned that the case was "initiated by
Bangladesh against Myanmar in December 2009". The
judgement read out by Jose Luis Jesus of Cape
Verde, president of the tribunal, is "final and
without appeal".
The release said,
"Myanmar had claimed that its maritime boundary
with Bangladesh cut directly across the Bangladesh
coastline, severely truncating Bangladesh's
maritime jurisdiction to a narrow wedge of sea not
extending beyond 130 nautical miles. Myanmar also
claimed that the tribunal lacked jurisdiction to
award continental shelf rights beyond 200 nautical
miles from either State's coast. The tribunal
rejected both of these arguments."
In the
release, Moni saluted Myanmar for it's willingness
to resolve matters legally.
Even so,
within Bangladesh there were some dissenting
voices in the media, with popular newspaper
Prothom Alo expressing concern on March 17 that
the verdict may lead to Myanmar achieving some
blocks that earlier belonged to Bangladesh.
Bangladesh and Myanmar had both claimed
150,000 square kilometers of the Bay of Bengal
since 1974, when the first talks for delineating
the maritime boundary were initiated between the
two nations. This came to a halt in 1986 and began
again in November 2007.
In October 2008,
while visiting Dhaka, Myanmar Energy Minister
Brigadier General Lun Thi had assured his
Bangladeshi counterpart that Myanmar "would not
conduct gas exploratory work in the disputed
maritime boundary area until the issue was
settled" between the two nations.
However,
on November 1, 2008, four drilling ships from
Myanmar, escorted by two naval ships from the
country, started exploration for hydrocarbon
reserves south west of St Martin's Island and
within 50 nautical miles of Bangladesh.
According to media reports, when three
naval ships of Bangladesh went to challenge these,
the Myanmar Navy alleged that the Bangladesh Navy
ships were trespassing. This aggravated the
dispute as Myanmar vowed to continue with the
exploration despite the dispute with Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh government told the Myanmar
envoy in Dhaka that his country should suspend all
activities within the declared maritime zones of
Bangladesh according to the Territorial Waters and
Maritime Zones Act 1974 of Bangladesh.
In
a March 15-report by Mizzima of Myanmar titled
"Burma, Bangladesh maritime dispute ends", it was
recalled that on November 9, 2008, "Daewoo,
[Norwegian drilling company] Transocean and the
Burmese regime withdrew their vessels" after the
"Korean and Chinese governments had intervened to
de-escalate the situation".
China is set
to be the destination of most of the gas Daewoo
and its partners extract from off Myanmar's Arakan
coast.
The ITLOS process began in December
2009 after the Bangladeshi government submitted a
formal complaint against Myanmar regarding the
"natural prolongation of the continental shelf and
the baseline".
Bangladesh's remaining
maritime boundary dispute with India is expected
to be settled in the UN's Permanent Court of
Arbitration based in The Hague, the Netherlands,
in 2014. Bangladesh favors a principle based on
"equity" while India, like Myanmar, favors an
"equidistance" system to obtain bigger maritime
areas.
Newly appointed Indian High
Commissioner to Bangladesh Pankaj Saran, while
calling on Foreign Minister Moni in her office in
Dhaka on March 17, said that India would favor a
bilateral end to the sea dispute.
Syed Tashfin Chowdhury is the
Editor of Xtra, the weekend magazine of New Age,
in Bangladesh.
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