Fair and Equal Exploitation of Transboundary Natural Hydrocarbon Based on International Law and Standards

Abstract

Cross-border shared resources have always been one of the legal and economic issues, since they are highly important to governments. Because of the inherent characteristic of governments and their willingness to exercise their sovereignty over the land, resources, and protection of these common cross-border resources, have always been challenging and a subject of disagreement between stakeholder countries, in the legal, economic, and political. These challenges become more serious when it comes to valuable and strategically shared cross-border resources such as oil, and gas. The case in this study is located on the common border between Iran and Iraq, which is the confluence of a valuable oil resources. This region is recognized as Azadegan and Majnoon oil fields. The importance of exploring this area is because it is regarded as one of the largest cross-border oil resource interconnections in the world in a single area. The existence of a huge and common underground oil reservoir, which is very valuable, is the reason for the conflict of interests between the two governments of Iran and Iraq. However, this conflict of interests has not only been created for governments, but it has interfered with the economic interests of international and multinational companies and the rights of present and future generations of human beings (collective/group rights). The escalation of this conflict of interest occurs when governments face shared oil resources onshore or offshore, which may jeopardize the rights of human generations and the environment due to political and economic competition.