Drilling for Black Gold: The Demarcation for Hydrocarbon Resources in the Caspian Sea

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 314II. Geographical and Historical Background of the Caspian 315A. Geography 315B. History 3161. The pre-Soviet and Soviet periods: Tsarist Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution 3172. The post-Soviet period: a flurry of unilateral activity 319III. Existing Proposals: The Law of the Sea and Customary InternationalLaw 326IV. Solution: The United Nations Convention on the Law and NonNavigationalUses of International Watercourses 330A. Threshold Question of Applicability 330B. Core Provisions 333C. Applying the Watercourse Convention to the Caspian 336V. Conclusion 339I. IntroductionThe Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world, "approximately the same length as the Great Lakes of North America"1 and "approximately the size of Japan."2 It contains plentiful oil and natural gas reserves, something explorer Marco Polo highlighted 700 years ago when "he wrote of 'a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance.'"3 As of 2013, the Caspian Sea was estimated to contain 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.4 It is also of geopolitical import to the U.S., as the division of the Caspian's borders implicates Iran's and Russia's energy and political interests. Given the rich natural resources as well as the lack of any clear territorial delineation, the Caspian littoral states have long disputed ownership over certain offshore resources contained within the Sea. For example, the Wikileaks cables show that in November of 2009, the Iranian government moved its new Alborz-Iran oilrig towards territorial waters disputed between Azerbaijan and Iran.5 As such, establishing clear demarcations within the Caspian Sea is all the more imperative to ensure equitable access to offshore hydrocarbon resources as well as peaceful and cooperative resolution of conflicts and disputes that have arisen between the littoral states.So far, the academic literature has primarily focused on identifying the geographical status of the Caspian Sea and inferring the applicable legal regime based on that identification. However, as this Comment will demonstrate, this approach has largely been ineffective and too open-ended, thus unable to produce a clear and coherent result.6 Instead, this Comment will analyze the Caspian question through a different legal prism: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (the Watercourse Convention). Section II will provide a brief geographical and historical background on the Caspian Sea, by charting the progression of the littoral states' respective positions and highlighting pertinent agreements and events. Section III will address the existing legal regimes that have been applied in the Caspian context, namely the law of the sea and customary international law governing lakes, and conclude that neither one is likely to solve the long-standing disagreements. Next, Section IV will argue that the Watercourse Convention provides a useful and easily applicable framework for resolving current and future territorial disputes in the Caspian, a mechanism that the present legal framework lacks. …