By ALLAN ODHIAMBO
Somalia has petitioned the UN body that determines international maritime borders to shelve Kenya’s applications for a larger territory in a dispute linked to lucrative oil and gas reserves in the Indian Ocean.
A document seen by the Business Daily shows that Somalia has filed a formal claim for a bigger chunk of the continental shelf but urged the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) not to consider applications made by Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen.
The internationally-backed government in Mogadishu is seeking to claw back authority over Somalia’s territorial waters, including the area bordering Kenya that is potentially rich in oil and gas deposits.
Somalia is pursuing a two-pronged approach that includes pursuing arbitration through UNCLOS and judicial process after it filed a suit last month with the International Court of Justice in The Hague – the UN’s top court.
“The purported claim by the Republic of Kenya includes maritime areas claimed by the Federal Republic of Somalia, thereby resulting in an overlapping area which, for the same purposes, constitutes the area under dispute,” Somalia said in its submission to the UNCLOS.
Somalia says it is ready to enter talks with Kenya for a deal that will allow members of the UNCLOS to consider and make recommendations on the submissions by each of the two coastal States in the areas under dispute.
“Pending such an agreement or understanding, Somalia requests the Commission not to take any steps that would prejudice any future bilateral delimitation in the maritime area concerned,” Somalia further says, referring to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
The commission partially oversees and arbitrates in the implementation of the UNCLOS. Similar caveats were filed by Somalia against Tanzania and Yemen, which are also eyeing larger territory of the shared Indian Ocean waters.
“There is a potential overlap between the Somali and the Tanzanian claims as regards the areas of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles,” Somalia said. At stake are legal claims by the two nations to sell rights for exploration and collect revenue from any discovery.
Somalia wants the maritime border to continue along the line of the land border, to the southeast diagonally and says a horizontal border would be unfair. Kenya, however, wants the sea border to go in a straight line east, giving it more sea territory.
If the suit goes Somalia’s way, Kenya would be left with a small triangle in the Indian Ocean for mineral rights, losing at least seven oil blocks it has offered to explorers.
The dispute has been running for years, keeping investors away because of the lack of legal clarity over who owns potential offshore oil and gas reserves. Cases at the Hague-based UN court can take years to resolve.
Kenya and Somalia signed a memorandum of understanding in 2009 that the border would run east along the line of latitude, but Somalia, which has lacked an effective central government since 1991, then rejected the agreement in parliament.
Somalia’s government in 2012 accused Kenya of awarding offshore oil and gas exploration blocks illegally to multinationals Total and Eni because the concessions lie in waters claimed by Somalia.
Kenya rejected the accusation that ownership of the blocks was contested and said there was no need to hold up exploration. Both countries have since submitted separate submissions to the UN agency seeking to claim additional territory on the shared Indian Ocean border.
Source: The East African