This book examines whether international agreements between non-state actors can be identified as a source of international law using objective criteria. It asks whether, beyond Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, there is a system of rules, processes, beliefs or semantics by which these agreements can be objectively identified as a source of international law. Departing from the more usual state-centric analysis, it adopts postmodern legal positivism as its analytical tool. This allows for the reality that international law-making takes place in subjective social landscapes. To test the effectiveness of this approach, it is applied to agreements between petroleum agencies and corporations which allow two or more states to exploit disputed resources across boundaries looking in particular at arrangements involving China, Vietnam and the Philippines. By so doing it illustrates an alternative way that states can manage disputes, without having to resort to conflict. It will appeal to both scholars and practitioners of public international law, as well as civil servants.

1. Introduction



2. International Agreements between Non-state Actors

I. Theories on the Legal Capacity of Non-state Actors

II. Theories on the Legality of Norms Generated by Non-state Actors

III. Non-state Actors in the Eyes of Postmodern Legal Positivism

A. The Separation Thesis and the Source Thesis

B. The Social Thesis

C. Law-Applying Authorities

IV. Chapter Summary



3. Deformalisation in the Identification of International Law

I. Conceptualisations of the Regime of the Continental Shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone

A. The Voluntarist-Positivist View

B. The Institutionalist View

C. The Functionalist View

II. The Identification of International Law on Shared Resources

A. Disputes Over Shared Resources

B. Efforts within Institutions to Identify International Law on Shared Resources

C. The Efforts of Scholars to Identify International Law on Shared Resources

III. Chapter Summary



4. The Identification of International Agreements between Non-state Actors as a Source of International Law

I. The Parameters of the Case Study

A. Petroleum Instruments as Research Materials

B. The Application of Postmodern Legal Positivism

II. The Main Findings from the Case Study

A. The Identification of International Agreements between Non-state Actors as a Source of International Law Based on Authority

B. The Identification of International Agreements between Non-state Actors as a Source of International Law Based on Legality

III. Chapter Summary



5. China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the Management of Resource Disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea

I. The Gulf of Beibu/Bac Bo

II. The South China Sea

A. The CNOOC-PetroVietnam-PNOC Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking

B. CNOOC-Forum Energy

C. CNOOC-PetroleumBrunei

III. The East China Sea

IV. Chapter Summary



6. Conclusion