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28 May 2015
Africa | International Dispute
Gide has for a number of years acted as counsel to the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire in its negotiations with its neighbour, Ghana, to delimit the maritime border between the two countries.
Both parties lay claim to a zone covering over 30,000 km² and including a number of offshore oil fields representing several hundred million barrels worth of oil.
At the same time, Ghana has unilaterally authorised the exploration and exploitation by various international operators of the resources in the disputed zone.
The parties have referred the dispute to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, in Hamburg, which will rule on delimitation of the border in 2017.
Pending such ruling, an international team led by Michel Pitron and Maître Kamara, of the Ivory Coast bar, and made up of legal, oil, cartography and environmental experts, filed an urgent application with the Tribunal for provisional protective measures.
In its ruling of 25 April 2015, the Special Chamber of the Tribunal, presided by Mr Bouguetaia, prohibited Ghana from carrying out any further drilling in the disputed zone, as well as from using any confidential information in its possession to the detriment of the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, and ordered the parties to cooperate in order to preserve the surface and subsurface resources and the marine environment, pending the border ruling.
This is the first time that the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has ordered such measures in a dispute of this nature.
