I refer to comments on oil exploration made by Dr Albert Caruana during the discussion programme Fatti on RTK radio (November 7).
Dr Caruana, Director General of the Continental Shelf Jurisdiction Department (Resources Ministry) commented about a map I used for a public talk, published in The Times (September 15), that presumably shows Italian claims prejudicial to Malta’s continental shelf rights. He alleged that my published academic paper shows this map.
Dr Caruana is incorrect. My recent paper is about geological research and does not show maritime boundaries.
Rash comments are inappropriate from a person whose position in the administration demands accuracy based on proper research.
Dr Caruana’s official responsibility is to ensure that the full extent of Malta’s continental shelf rights is divulged to the public and the world. Nevertheless, evidence over the last couple of years proves that those in authority have failed their responsibility to uphold the national interest.
Consequently, maps published by research institutes, oil companies and a local newspaper in 2010, show boundaries that reflect Italian claims which are prejudicial to Malta’s western shelf rights. The authorities never commented on these maps that have a more lasting effect than a public talk.
Dr Caruana’s radio broadcast also assured us that Malta is “fighting for every inch” of its continental shelf. However, local journalists have repeatedly queried Government’s silence on presumptuous Libyan concessions to Sirte Oil Co. over our Medina Bank.
Is silence the kind of fighting spirit Dr Caruana had in mind? Whereas Dr Caruana chooses to openly censure researchers like myself, he is taciturn on the oil concession map issued by the Malta Resources Authority (boundary A surrounding Malta in the adjoining map) that is prejudicial to Malta’s continental shelf rights in the east.
It is expected that the boundary between Malta and eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) is equidistant (red line C in map) as stipulated by the Continental Shelf Act of Malta (1966), where no boundary agreement exists.
Indeed, the Malta/Italy modus vivendi on the boundary with southeast Sicily is equidistant.
However, in view of the 1985 decision by the International Court of Justice that dispenses with the equidistance principle between Malta and western Libya (line D on map), one would at least expect the extrapolation of the boundary to the east to be based on the ratio implied in the ICJ’s 1985 decision, as shown by line B (approximate) in the map.
Actually, the MRA’s oil concessions boundary map for offshore southeast Malta respects neither the equidistance principle nor the ICJ ratio and consequently lacks legal, geographical and geological logic. Dr Caruana’s tacit approval of the MRA’s concession map effectively results in the loss of several hundreds of square kilometres of Maltese continental shelf area, including the potentially oil-rich Medina Escarpment.
What will the Director for Continental Shelf Jurisdiction do about this loss of continental shelf not far from where BP plans to drill a number of oil wells on the Libyan side, or, rather, who is Dr Caruana now going to blame for this blunder?