The Legal Status of the Caspian Sea: Implications on Caspian Resources Development and Transport

Year 2016, Issue: 2, 62 - 69, 01.09.2016

Sohbet Karbuz

Abstract

The Caspian Sea, the largest landlocked
body of salty water in the world, is surrounded by five “Caspian States”:
Russia in the north; Iran in the south; Azerbaijan in the west, and Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan in the east. Caspian Sea’s location at the crossroads of
Asia, Europe, and the Middle East has kept the region’s strategic importance to
international geopolitics.

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991,
Soviet-Iran treaties governed the exploitation of the Caspian Sea, but since
then a legislative black hole in governance and delimitation has been created.
All littoral states agree that a multilateral treaty is the ideal way to
resolve their dispute over the division of the sea bottom and the
delimitation of surface waters.

For more than two decades, the Caspian littoral
states have been working on resolving the Caspian problem in numerous meetings
at various levels including the summit conferences of the heads of states and
governments. However, despite over 40 ad hoc working group meetings at the
level of deputy foreign ministers and four Summits[1] of
Caspian Sea Heads of State, they have been unable to find a solution that
would satisfy all.[2]

There are great difficulties in resolving this
issue since even international laws fail to provide an adequate framework. All
the treaties in the past relate to navigation and, to a lesser
extent, fishing rights, but not to seabed mining. Navigation and
fishing rights should not be confused with the right of using the mineral
resources. With mineral resources, the seabed is taken to consideration and not
the water layer. Failed consensus due to diverse motives and interests
paved the way for unilateral actions, bilateral and trilateral agreements,[3] and
consequent disputes.

The legal headache of dividing up the sea
continues to pose a serious obstacle to the development of several fields and
blocked many projects including trans-Caspian oil and gas pipelines. After all,
how the Caspian seabed is divided among the littoral states will determine
which hydrocarbon fields will fall into whose sector.

Keywords

Status of the Caspian Sea, Caspian Resources Development and Transport

References

• 1 Up to now, the summits have been held in Ashgabat in 2002, Tehran in 2007, Baku in 2010 and Astrakhan in 2014. The next one is planned to be held this summer in Astana. 2 Adopted agreements so far cover the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological resources of the Caspian Sea, cooperation in the field of prevention and liquidation of emergency situations in the Caspian Sea, and cooperation in the field of hydrometeorology of the Caspian Sea. 3 Following the bilateral treaties they concluded in the second half the 1990s, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed in May 2003, a tripartite agreement dividing the northern 64% of the Caspian Sea seabed and subsoil into three unequal parts, and left the waters of the Caspian open to shared use for maritime commerce and fishing. Kazakhstan obtained 27%, Russia 19%, and Azerbaijan 18%. Iran rejects the suggested share of 14% but lays claim to 20%, transferring the boundary 80 km north of the line along which the Iran-Soviet maritime boundary was drawn.