Offshore Gas in the Eastern Mediterranean: Strive for Cooperation Over Maritime Delimitation Disputes Between Turkey and Cyprus
Published 14 July 2014
Introduction
This paper will investigate the legal, historical and geopolitical problems that exist in the Eastern Mediterranean, focusing on delimitation and the potential of cooperation between Cyprus and Turkey. The Mediterranean Sea, "characterised by a diversity of political, ethnic and religious backgrounds, presents great petroleum potential". Exploitation of such resource is however complex, given the Mediterranean deep waters and historically-rooted inter-national confrontations. In addition to this, most states choose to extend their territorial waters, embracing the continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) concepts. Consequently, this creates a problem of overlapping claims because of the small size of the Mediterranean Sea. Given the particular geographical circumstances, historic rights and territorial disputes over islands, delimitation of the overlapping claims becomes difficult. The Mediterranean Sea is a semi-enclosed sea and "states are strongly intertwined between them", aggravating the delimitation.
Footnotes omitted from this introduction.