by Justice Lee Adoboe
ACCRA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on Saturday rejected Cote d'Ivoire's claims that Ghana had infringed its sovereign boundary in oil exploration within a disputed zone.
The Hamburg-based tribunal prescribed new coordinates for the demarcation of the maritime boundary between the two countries.
It decide that "the single maritime boundary for the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nm starts at BP 55+ with the coordinates 05° 05' 23.2"N, 03° 06' 21.2'' W in WGS 84 as a geodetic datum."
It also affirmed Ghana's argument of adoption of equidistance method of delimitation of maritime boundary between it and Cote d'Ivoire while rejecting Cote d'Ivoire's bisector line method of delimitation.
"Of course the maritime boundary has been redrawn but the new designations are not different from Ghana's arguments," Theo Acheampong, a researcher at Abadeen University in Scotland and a petroleum economist told Xinhua.
He emphasized that Ghana's current oil and gas fields, namely the TEN and HESS discoveries, are not affected by the ITLOS ruling, going by publicly available documents.
Since both countries submitted themselves to the ITLOS ruling this final determination brings a closure to the matter, added Acheampong.
Cote d'Ivoire started its claims over the territory after Ghana discovered oil in commercial quantities in 2007 and 2009.
After 10 failed negotiation attempts, Ghana led by former President John Dramani Mahama filed a case at ITLOS in 2014 seeking a determination of the maritime boundary between the two countries.
