Argentina will take legal action against any companies involved in oil exploration off the disputed Falkland Islands as part of a drive to pressure Britain into sovereignty talks, the foreign minister said on Thursday.
Three decades after it repelled an Argentine invasion of the Falklands, Britain has vowed to defend the archipelago, saying it will negotiate sovereignty or oil rights only in the unlikely event that the 3,000 islanders want that.
The conflict has heated up in recent months as the war’s 30-year anniversary nears and findings by British exploration firms raise hopes of a potential tax windfall and boon to the islands’ economy.
Argentina says the exploration and drilling activities are illegal since the area is contested. It says Britain is violating Argentine law and UN resolutions that call for talks and prohibit unilateral action as long as the dispute persists.
The South American country, run by center-left President Cristina Fernandez, will bring civil and criminal charges to sanction the gamut of companies involved.
“With these actions we assume the responsibility of defending Argentina’s natural resources,” Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told a news conference. “The South Atlantic’s oil and gas are property of the Argentine people.”
Britain reacted by saying it supported the rights of Falkland islanders to exploit their oil reserves. This was an “integral part of the right of self-determination,” a British Foreign Office spokesman said.
It was not immediately clear what kind of judicial action Argentina could take. The government said it planned to seek international cooperation to gather information or enforce court orders issued by Argentine authorities.
Several companies have drilled in waters off the islands, which are called Las Malvinas in Spanish. British explorer Rockhopper has been seeking a partner to invest in the US$2 billion Sea Lion project.
Borders & Southern and Falkland Oil & Gas are set to drill wells south of the islands this year.
In addition to the exploration companies, Timerman said Argentina will go after the firms that run and provide services to the two drilling platforms in the area.
The Ocean Guardian platform is owned by Diamond Offshore Drilling, while the Leiv Eiriksson rig is owned by DryShips and its majority-owned Ocean Rig unit.
Companies providing logistical, financial and legal support to the search for Falklands oil will also face administrative and judicial action, he added.
“Argentina understands that without the participation of many other actors, these illegitimate activities cannot be carried out,” Timerman said.
The government will notify international investors like UBS, Fidelity and Credit Suisse — which hold shares in the exploration firms — of the actions it plans to take.
And it will urge US and British market regulators to force the oil companies to disclose the risks involved in operating in an area subject to a messy sovereignty dispute.
The exploration licenses are awarded to firms by the islands’ governor in consultation with the British Foreign Office.
In theory, any company could apply, but the Falklands government would be unlikely to grant a license to an applicant in which Argentine interests hold more than a 49 percent stake, according to a leaked cable from the US embassy in London dated February 2010.
Falkland residents, known as “Kelpers,” show no signs of wanting to break with Britain.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to