Falklands oil row back in the spotlight

According to news agency reports, the British Foreign Office reacted calmly to the recent decree by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to impose new controls on shipping to the Falkland Islands.

The calm reaction from London causes suspicion. It is clear that the decree by the Argentine president can ratchet up tensions which are already running high between Britain and Argentina over Britain’s attempts to drill for oil and gas in the South Atlantic. Earlier this month the Argentine foreign minister lodged a protest with London about drilling in the seabed around the Falklands. Last week Argentine’s authorities ordered to block a shipment of pipes they believed was bound for the Falklands and would be used by the British to drill for oil.

Reports in the British press say Desire Petroleum is to start drilling 160 kilometers north of the archipelago at the end of the month. In estimates of the company’s experts, the oil and gas reserves off the Falklands may total 3 billion barrels. Experts from Edinburgh-based British Geological Survey estimate the Falklands shelf reserves at 60 billion barrels. If so, the region’s oil reserves are comparable to Libya’s and Nigeria’s taken together.

The first reports about rich oil reserves near the Falklands appeared in the press in the late 1970s. Experts predicted that the Falklands oil reserves 13 times exceeded those on the North Sea bottom. Some analysts tend to think that it was reports of rich energy reserves in the South Atlantic that caused a conflict between Argentina and Britain and sent the two nations into a short war they fought in 1982. Britain still prides itself on winning the war.

Mrs. Thatcher says nothing about the reasons for the war. But whatever the reasons, the war claimed almost 1000 lives on both sides. If the two countries fought over the natural resources of the Falklands, the oil and gas reserves companies are planning to drill for in the near future are stained with soldiers’ blood. But interests of the big business often come first. And considering the dwindling oil reserves in the North Sea, Britain has no other option but drill for oil near the Falklands. In May last year London demanded of the UN that its continental shelf around the archipelago be expanded from 200 to 350 sea miles, which will allow Britain to begin offshore exploration drilling near the uninhabited South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.