Analyses On The Legal Issues Of Transnationally Cooperative Ocean Oil Development

Transnational co-operation is the major means adopted by most countries to develop their offshore oil resources, and there's no exception to our country. Ocean oil development of this kind involves various legal issues, which may be classified into different categories of law, due to the factors of"transnationality"and"co-operation"entailed in the development activities. From different angles or specialties, our domestic scholars of international investment law and ocean law have, respectively, done some research into these legal issues. So far, however, even some comprehensive legal treatises on oil development have not formed the specialized and systematic theory on transnationally co-operative ocean oil development.The goal of this thesis paper is to overally and systematically explore, probe into some main legal issues concerned, to set up a certain theoretical structure through respective analyses on the two types of means in which ocean oil is developed transnationally, thus, clarifying some misunderstandings and meeting the practical needs.First of all, the legal concept of transnationally co-operative ocean oil development is a macroconcept and there should be a broad interpretation and a narrow interpretation for it: in its narrow sense, this concept mainly refers to the activities and legal relationship thus involved between the government of the host country or its national oil company and foreign private investors, usually some big transnational oil companies, of which the two parties jointly develop, based on their oil co-operation agreement, the oil resources lying within the host country's ocean boundary; while in its broad sense, the concept should, besides the type mentioned above, also include another kind of activities and thus different-categoried legal relationship involved between countries which reach an agreement or treaty, as it were, to jointly arrange and implement the development of their mutually rights-shared single oil units or fields which cross their ocean boundaries or any oil field found in their dominion-disputed ocean areas. To differentiate this concept and the long established"parallel development rule"in international law system, the two types of transnationally co-operative ocean oil development are supposed to be applied in Continental Shelf or Exclusive Economic Zone, with"The Area"excluded out.