Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are battling for oil-rich islands

The tiny island of Mbanié off the coast of Gabon is the subject of a dispute pitting Equatorial Guinea against Gabon at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

Both Central African countries have laid claim to the 74-acre (30 hectare) island and two smaller islets, all of which are thought to contain significant oil resources.

Equatorial Guinea on Monday asked judges at the ICJ to reject Gabon’s claim to the island. Gabon will present its case on Wednesday, with the hearings to take a week.

Equatorial Guinea’s claim is based on a 1900 border treaty between Spain, its former colonial ruler, and France, Gabon’s former colonial administrator. Gabon, however, believes the ICJ should base its decision on another agreement, the Bata Convention signed in 1974.

Representing Equatorial Guinea at the court, the country’s Vice Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Domingo Mba Esono challenged the validity of the agreement documents presented by Gabon. He described Gabon’s position as “factually and legally untenable.”

The neighboring countries, who are represented in court by teams each made up of over a dozen lawyers, senior government officials, diplomats, and cartographers, specifically want the judges to rule on which of the legal texts are valid.

Questioning the 1974 documents by Gabon, lawyer Philippe Sands representing Equatorial Guinea told the judges, “You are being asked to rule that a state can rely on a photocopy of a photocopy of a purported document, the original of which cannot be found and of which no mention was made or any reliance placed for three decades.”

The world court is slated to issue its final and binding ruling sometime next year.

“African states have emphasized the critical importance of the rules concerning succession to title as defined on the date of independence,” Professor Dapo Akande told the judges, citing past disputes involving Cameroon and Nigeria, as well as Mali and Burkina Faso.

The dispute, which dates back to the early 1970s. Gabon’s army in 1972 pushed soldiers from Equatorial Guinea out of Mbanié and established its own military presence.

Hostilities largely cooled off until the early 2000s, when the oil potential of the islands became apparent. Following years of mediation by the United Nations, the two countries in 2016 signed an agreement allowing the ICJ to ultimately settle the dispute.

Both Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have been significant oil producers and members of the OPEC cartel in the past. More recently Equatorial Guinea, which is OPEC’s smallest producer, has seen crude production halve over the last five years from as much as 140,000 barrels a day to 70,000 barrels in August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. But Gabon is said to be seeing a resurgence in oil production to around 200,000 a day. Both countries have assured international investors of their intention to expand oil and gas production in the near term.

Cover photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images