The Impact of the Pre-exploitation on the Re-determination of the State's Shares in Trans-boundary Natural Resources

The natural resources are the most valuable wealth belonging to every nation which based on them the sustainable and equitable development in any society would be planned and implemented. So far as they are lying on the territorial borders of two countries and being shared between them, the issue becomes highly sensitive. Devising a legal regime for the shared natural resources and their way of exploitation are so a vital concern for the states that the pre-exploitation by other partner states would be usually denied since they have done it before the establishment of a legal regime. This article aims firstly to examine the impacts of the pre-exploitation on the shares of the countries under international law and then explore whether the pre-exploitation was consistent with the principles and purposes of the UN Charter as well as international jurisprudence. Then a computational model is offered so that it reveals the pre-exploitation by the states from the shared natural resources and based on this model their shares would then be properly distributed. In the end, as a practical example, the South Pars gas field was evaluated based on the computational model and its results were analyzed.