Page 348 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

284 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
Britain, the maritime State which is most involved in the Gulf,1 has
already challenged Iran's action in a note of protest which was de­
livered to the Iranian Foreign Minister on 12 October 1959. In that
note, it was staled, inter alia, that ‘Her Majesty’s Government cannot
recognise as valid under international law unilateral claims to a
breadth of territorial sea greater than three miles.*2
(c) Nature and legal effects of the Proclamations of 1949
The question as to the legal effects of the Proclamations of 1949 arose
in connection with Lord Asquith’s Award in the case of Petroleum
Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd v. Shaikh Abu Dhabi, September
1951.3 It may be useful to explain in some detail the relevant issues
involved in this Award and its general bearing on the Shaikhdoms’
claims to the continental shelf in the Arabian Gulf. The facts of the
Abu Dhabi case are:

On 11 January 1939 Shaikh Shakhbut of Abu Dhabi granted an
oil concession agreement to Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast)
Ltd, a British company. The concession included ‘exclusive right’ to
drill for and win mineral oil within a certain area in Abu Dhabi.4
On 10 June 1949 the Shaikh issued a proclamation which declared
that ‘the sea-bed and sub-soil lying beneath the high seas in the
[Arabian] Gulf contiguous to the territorial waters of Abu Dhabi’
was subject to the ‘exclusive jurisdiction and control’ of that country.
The precise limits of the offshore areas claimed were to be determined
by agreement with other littoral States.5 The Shaikh also undertook
in 1949, ten years after the conclusion of the 1939 concession agree­
ment, to transfer his asserted rights with respect to the offshore areas
of Abu Dhabi to Superior Oil Corporation, an American company.
The British company, Petroleum Development, challenged the
Shaikh’s right to give away to another company the Abu Dhabi
offshore areas which, it alleged, were already covered by the 1939
agreement. The Shaikh, on the other hand, took the view that the
agreement of 1939 was restricted to the land territory of Abu Dhabi
and it, therefore, covered neither the territorial waters nor the sea-bed
and sub-soil of the offshore areas which were the subject of the
Proclamation of 1949. The Arbitrator was asked to determine whether
the Shaikh at the time of the agreement of 1939, or ‘as a result of the
Proclamation of 1949’, had in fact acquired rights over the mineral
resources of the submarine areas lying outside territorial waters. If
1 Britain’s involvement in the Gulf is due to her protectorate relationship with
the Gulf Shaikhdoms.
2 See Lauterpacht, E., I.C.L.Q., op. cit., p. 279.
3 For text of the Award, see I.C.L.Q., 1 (1952), p. 247. Ibid.
6 For the text of the Abu Dhabi Proclamation of June 1949, see t/.AX.o.,
High Seas (1951) pp. 22-30.