BUENOS AIRES — Argentine President Javier Milei threatened to launch international legal action against the United Kingdom unless oil exploration at the Sea Lion field off the Falkland Islands — known in Argentina as Las Malvinas — is halted within two weeks, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.
In a social media post, Milei said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry and legal teams to prepare arbitration if what he called “illegal plundering” through the Sea Lion project continued, warning he would take the dispute to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum hold licences issued under British authority; the field, about 130 miles (209 km) from the islands, is estimated to hold about 1.7 billion barrels, and extraction is due within two years, the BBC said.
The threat follows Milei’s United Nations General Assembly speech criticising the UN over Falklands sovereignty and British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting’s remark that Argentina “lacks the ability” to seize the islands by force. Islanders voted 99.8% to remain a British overseas territory in a 2013 referendum. Argentina invaded in 1982 before a British task force retook the archipelago after a 74-day war.
Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera
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