bdnews24.com New Delhi correspondent

New Delhi, Jan 9 (bdnews24.com) – India may push for an early settlement of its maritime boundary dispute with Bangladesh during prime minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to Delhi.

Bangladesh, India and Myanmar have been unable to exploit oil and gas reserves in the Bay due to claims and counter-claims for the offshore blocks. Myanmar and India have made overlapping claims on several of Bangladesh's 28 sea blocks.

Dhaka and Yangon, at the end of two-day talks in Chittagong on Saturday, agreed to "strike a balance" between the principles of equity and equidistance to resolve their sea border disputes.

Meanwhile, Indian diplomats believe that New Delhi and Dhaka could work together to expedite the arbitration process under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Sources in India's ministry of external affairs said that the issue could figure in the talks between Hasina and her host prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday (January 11, 2010).

Secretary of India's ministry of petroleum RS Pandey has recently written to foreign secretary Nirupama Rao requesting her to see that the issue is taken up with Dhaka "urgently" so that India can go ahead with hydrocarbon exploration in the Bay of Bengal without further "interruptions".

Earlier, the Indian government's directorate general of hydrocarbons had informed the secretary of the ministry of petroleum that the international companies carrying out exploration in the blocks offered by India in the Bay of Bengal had complained of interference by the Bangladesh Navy.

The directorate general of hydrocarbons stated in a note that such interruptions by the Bangladesh Navy were a matter of serious concern.

Following objections by the Bangladesh Navy, India's ministry of defence early last year asked Australian exploration and production firm Santos to restrict its seismic and controlled source electro-magnetic (CSEM) surveys only to the undisputed Indian waters in Bay of Bengal.

Santos had been awarded contracts to carry out surveys in India's deepwater blocks NEC-DWN-2004/1 and NEC-DWN-2004/2 in the Bay of Bengal. The Autralian firm later asked the Indian government to consider an extension of the Production Sharing Contract timeframe for exploration as the restrictions caused by the international maritime boundary dispute between Delhi and Dhaka would result in a 30 % to 40 % reduction in the operational areas of the blocks, it said.

The maritime dispute between Delhi and Dhaka was also aggravated after Bangladesh allotted offshore blocks to multinationals ConocoPhillips and Tullow Oil Ltd.

After objections by New Delhi, Dhaka has sought UN arbitration under the Annex VII of the UNCLOS, which requires setting up of a tribunal by the two countries for delineation of their common sea-boundary.

While Bangladesh has nominated Alan Vaughan Lowe, a former professor of public international law at the University of Oxford, to be a member of the tribunal, India has proposed the name of P Sreenivasa Rao, a former legal advisor to the Indian government's ministry of external affairs.

"Given the excellent bilateral cooperation between India and Bangladesh, we feel that both countries together can expedite the composition of the tribunal and the process of arbitration;" said a highly-placed official of the Indian Government.

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