The International Curt in Hague is to decide on the important energy reserves on the Black Sea continental plateaus at times when the process of Kiev's administration of rights to use layers is intensifying. Ukraine's geopolitical arguments are disregarded by the international court in this trial on the delimitation of the continental plateaus. The strategic target of the Hague lawsuit is the hydrocarbon resources. According to the experts ZIUA has talked to, they are estimated to billions of cube meters of natural gas and about 10 million tons of oil. Ukraine and Romania, the opposing parties, are banned to exploit the resources under dispute commercially, given the annex to the Political Treaty in 1997. They are allowed just to have exploring activities in the area. The region under dispute has been intensely exploited by Romania ever since 1970-1980. The ex Soviet republic has in its turn intensified activities in the last years. According to the Ukrainian press, a drill well discovered in 2001 an important layer in the south of the Snakes Island: about 10 billion cube meters of natural gas and about 10 million tons of oil. Resources don't matter The experts ZIUA has interviewed claim that the method the Hague Court is using for the marine delimitation is one that has been consolidated in jurisprudence due to solutions reached in many such cases. The idea is that economic matters play no part at all. It is an objective mathematical-geometrical method that starts from the geographical context of the region where the delimitation is due. The presence of geological structures including hydrocarbons or the fact that one of the sides presently granted oil concession rights plays no role at all in the delimitation process. Geopolitical aspects are analyzed neither. The parties' smaller or greater dependence on the Russian import of natural gas makes no argument to be successfully invoked in trial.

Victor RONCEA