A proposed offshore oil project near the Falkland Islands threatens sensitive marine ecosystems—and Argentina’s sovereignty—and must be halted, an Argentine environmental group and a veterans’ organization alleged in a new lawsuit.
The complaint, filed in a federal Argentine court on Tuesday, asks the court to block planned offshore oil operations by U.K.-based Rockhopper Exploration and Navitas Petroleum of Israel on the Argentine continental shelf, about 136 miles north of the Falkland Islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas Islands, or Islas Malvinas.
The plaintiffs—the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers and the Malvinas Islands La Plata Ex-Combatants Center—argue that the Sea Lion oil and gas project is being developed without an environmental impact assessment or environmental authorization from Argentina.
“Licenses from the British colonial administration do not replace our laws nor allow lawful disposal of the natural assets of the Argentine continental shelf,” the plaintiffs said in a press release.
The government of the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory, announced in December that it had approved the project. That government’s Department of Mineral Resources did not respond to a request for comment.
Argentina has challenged British control over the islands for more than 190 years, asserting that it inherited the islands from Spain. The dispute erupted into a 10-week war in 1982.
Argentina’s claim to the islands is deeply ingrained in the nation’s popular consciousness, including in monuments and signs around the country marking distances to the Islas Malvinas. After Argentina’s national team beat England in the semifinals of the World Cup this year, two players held up a banner that read: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”—the Malvinas are Argentine.
“The wound is double,” the plaintiffs said in a press release about the British-Israeli oil project. “It affects ecosystems. It affects the people’s right to decide and preserve what is their own.”
Neither Rockhopper Exploration nor Navitas Petroleum responded to requests for comment. Their operations would involve 23 wells, including oil-producing, water-injection and gas-injection wells, along with offshore production and transportation infrastructure, according to the complaint.
The project would cause seabed disturbance, heavy ship traffic and underwater noise, while introducing the risk of catastrophic oil spills, according to the complaint. Those impacts affect the Argentine Sea and the South Atlantic islands, which form a biological bridge connecting South American marine life to Antarctica.
Marine life in the region includes hundreds of species of fish, Southern right whales, sea lions, penguins, orcas and dolphins. The project would put their food sources, reproduction and migration pathways at risk, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also asserts that the oil project violates the rights of nature, arguing that the impacted ecosystems have a right to maintain their integrity and natural functions.
Rights of nature laws have exploded around the world over the past two decades. That’s especially the case in Latin America, where national laws, court rulings and one constitution, Ecuador’s, have recognized ecosystems’ rights, often a legal system’s highest form of protection.
The complaint also points to a 2025 advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which discussed the evolution of legal systems toward recognizing nature’s rights and emphasizing governments’ obligations to protect, restore and regenerate ecosystems.
Argentina’s veterans, the lawsuit says, have a special interest in the islands and surrounding sea, where 649 soldiers died during the war with Great Britain. Any potential environmental disaster or seabed disturbance there would threaten those sites, disrupting the grieving process and historical memory for the families of the fallen, the complaint says.
The lawsuit also asserts that the drilling venture is a continuation of foreign interference in the region.
“Colonialism is no longer limited to the military occupation of land. It is also carried out and manifested through the extraction of natural resources from the occupied territory,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit asks the Argentine court to block any financial transactions linked to the project, arguing that financial institutions and investors enabling it are engaged in illegal activity under Argentine law.
“We believe we have a very good chance of securing a landmark ruling,” Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, said in a written statement to Inside Climate News.
“It is colonially occupied territory, and the project is clearly illegal,” Viale added. “We’re going after the project’s sources of funding. The idea is to block that—the root of the problem—because without funding, there can be no exploitation.”
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Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News covering the rights of nature movement and international environmental justice. Her work has a strong focus on the intersection of human rights and the environment. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. Her journalism work has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of International Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
