Page 332 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

268 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
publication in the Saudi Arabian gazette.1 No reservation was made
in the agreement that its coming into force was dependent on the
signing by Kuwait of another agreement with the same, or a different,
company. At the same time the agreement did provide for its imple­
mentation whether or not Kuwait concluded an agreement with the
Japanese or any other company. For instance, article 28 provided
for subscription by Saudi Arabia to 20 per cent of the shares of the
company, in the ease where the company did not acquire concessions
from Kuwait in respect of her undivided share. The same article also
provided that, in the absence of an agreement with the Shaikh of
Kuwait in respect of his share, the ‘Government shall be entitled to
nominate one third of the board of directors’.
As a final word on the legal consequences of concluding an agree­
ment by Saudi Arabia in respect of her share in the Neutral Zone,
without a similar agreement being concluded with Kuwait, it may be
useful to cite the following comment:
In theory and, indeed, legally, there seems nothing to prevent the Saudi
Japanese Agreement from being fully implemented even if no parallel agree­
ment with Kuwait is forthcoming. Several of its Articles, as may be seen,
arc drafted so as to make provision for that contingency. But nevertheless,
if the Japan Petroleum Trading Co. Ltd. were to operate in respect of ‘an
undivided one-half interest in and to the offshore (outside territorial waters)
of the Neutral Territory lying between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait’ (Article 1)
over which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has sovereignty, without any
parallel agreement with Kuwait—which has exactly the same sovereignty
over exactly the same area—the situation might prove very awkward in
practice. For ‘an undivided one-half interest’ means precisely what it says.
It is a half interest in the whole of an area not divided up into halves; it is
a half interest in a whole, not a whole interest in a half. Imagine a situation
in which Kuwait wanted submarine drilling to be conducted in exactly the
same locality in which the Japan Petroleum Trading Co. was already drilling
or about to drill—or drilling taking place there before it could do so, under
an agreement concluded by Kuwait with some company other than the
Japanese one. Both would be there by equal right. Co-sovereignty by States
in undivided shares over land may differ in some respects from individuals
tenancy of land in undivided shares . . .2
The problems raised in this comment on the over-lapping of con-
cession agreements in the Neutral Zone have now become hypo­
thetical owing to the fact that the same Japanese Company the
Arabian Oil Company—has secured a similar Agreement dated
5 July 1958 with Kuwait in respect of her own undivided one-half
share in the area.3
1 The Petroleum Times. comment on the ‘An Undivided One-half Share
Interest', vol. LXII, No. 1579, 14 February 1958, p. 111.
2 The Petroleum Times, op. cit., p. 111. . ,
3 For text, see Kuwait Al- Yawm (Government of Kuwait s official gazette;,
No. 181, 13 July 1958.