Via Professor Howard Friedman:  Nima Mersadi Tabari, Ph.D. candidate at the University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, has timely posted The Sharia’h Dimension of the Persian Gulf’s Hydrocarbon Resources.  Tabari illustrates how Islamic law governs extraction of Middle Eastern oil, financing oil operations, and sale of this indispensable and all consuming resource.  Such a study promises to illuminate the originating motives of the global oil politics that permeate American domestic policy (consider the congressional Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling dispute, which remains active after decades [NYT, Feb. 3]) and its foreign concerns (the Iranian threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, and naval buildup there, is a frightening tinderbox [NYT, Feb. 13].  Please find Tabari’s abstract after the jump.

Islamic law incorporates general principles governing the economic behaviour of the Islamic society and specific instruments regulating classic commercial transactions. Adherence to Islam is the common characteristic of Persian Gulf oil and gas producers and their legal regimes to different extents reflect this common characteristic. This paper addresses the Islamic law of natural resources and the legal frameworks of Islamic finance methods used in upstream projects.