Page 79 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

76 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

and two Japanese companies, the Middle East Oil Company (MEOC) and the
Abu Dhabi Oil Company. It also rode roughshod over the agreement con­
cluded between Qatar and Abu Dhabi only the previous year for the definition

of their common maritime frontier. The frontier, which ran out to sea from just
off the entrance to the Khaur al-Udaid, roughly in a north-easterly direction
was designed to facilitate exploitation of the Bunduq offshore oil structure’
which extended into both Qatar and Abu Dhabi territorial waters. The con­

cessionary rights, which again were jeopardized by the Saudi claim, were
divided between the Japanese Middle East Oil Company and Abu Dhabi
Marine Areas, a consortium of British Petroleum and CompagnieFran^aisedes
Petroles (CFP).
In the south the projected frontier along the 23rd parallel deprived Abu
Dhabi not only of the Zarrara structure but also of the Shah field and part of the

Asab field. It violated ADPC’s concessionary rights in the territory between
the 23rd parallel and the Riyad Line, as well as the rights of Phillips Petroleum,
ENI and MEOC in the same stretch of territory. In its course from south to
north through the eastern marches of the shaikhdom the frontier again
infringed the concessionary rights of all four companies. The demand that

ownership of the Buraimi oasis, where Zayid himself had been born and raised,
be determined by plebiscite was both impertinent and cynically conceived.
Not only did it sweep aside all the normal determinants of sovereignty, such as
historical title, legal jurisdiction and prescriptive usage, but it also presaged a
repetition of the bribery, sedition and intimidation which had characterized

Saudi activities in the oasis and its vicinity from 1952 to 1955. By brushing
aside the sultan of Oman’s legitimate interests in the area, Faisal was arrogating
to himself the right not only to decide to whom the Omani villages in the oasis
belonged, but also to determine unilaterally the whereabouts of the Saudi
Arabia-Oman frontier by declaring it to lie along the 56th meridian. In so

doing, he both violated the territorial integrity of the sultanate and trespassed
upon the concessionary rights held by Royal Dutch Shell and CFP, the
principal concessionaires in Oman.
Finally, Faisal had thrown out a direct challenge to Britain as the protecting
power in Abu Dhabi, a challenge that struck at the very basis of Britain s legal
position in the Gulf and her historical connexions with the littoral shaikhdoms.
That position, as we have seen, rested upon the trucial system and upon the

subsequent exclusive treaties with the shaikhdoms. The trucial system had
evolved out of the need to keep the peace at sea, and this, in turn, had require
that the independence of the shaikhdoms be upheld against potential con­
querors, which in effect meant setting limits to the expansion of Saudi power.
The containment of Saudi power implied the delineation of the eastern fronuer

of the Saudi state, which Britain had been attempting to bring about since
1935. As things stood in May 1970, thette facto frontier was the Riyad me 0
1955, as modified and reaffirmed in 1955. Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, as we