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Abstract
Almost 40 years of border dispute between Russia and Norway in the Barents Sea was officially over on September 15, 2010. Both Oslo and Moscow can now legitimately map the area that has been ruled by a moratorium since 1980. Days before a visit by Russian President Medvedev to Oslo in April 2010, few people would have predicted a resolution of the long-standing maritime border dispute. From the very beginning of the official negotiations in 1974, the Soviet Union and Norway had fundamentally different standpoints and no willingness to compromise. The disputed area made up 12 percent of the whole Barents Sea, which was the equivalent of 45 percent of Norway's total land area. The agreement was made on the grounds of a Norwegian proposal for the use of a median line principle. Russia finally gave up its long standing meridian line principle. The median line basically divided the disputed sea into the halves. This vast area contained substantial amounts of biological resources and likely huge reserves of carbon resources.
The median line principle formed the basis of the delimitation of the continental shelf in the North Sea in the 1960s and in most of the later maritime delimitation talks between Norway and other neighboring states.
It seems likely, therefore, that the equidistance line will emerge as one important factor in negotiating appropriate maritime boundaryline between China and Korea, China and Japan, and in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, and also between China and Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea. It will be the most simple and authoritative rule in many maritime boundary disputes in the future, if not the best.
Key words: Norway, Russia, North Sea, Median Line v Meridian Line, Maritime Boundary Disputes.
INTRODUCTION
Russia and Norway ratified an agreement on how to divide the Barents Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, with potential oil and gas reserves, on July 7, 2013. It was a pleasant ending to a nearly 40-year negotiation process begun in 1974 which finalized a compromise treaty drafted on April 27, 2010 and signed on September 15, 2010. The agreement will affect a 68,000 square mile area. The two foreign ministers of the signatory nations celebrated the agreement in Oslo on July 2,...