Negotiating offshore resources

Natalie Klein, a lecturer at Macquarie University, and author of Dispute Settlement in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Cambridge University Press, 2005) raises the Malta - Libya question in her article about the dispute between Australia and East Timor over offshore resources. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The state with the longer coastline usually receives a proportionately larger share of the maritime area. So, for example, in a case between Libya and Malta, the median line was shifted closer to Malta because Malta's coastline was so much shorter than Libya's. The same would happen to East Timor here. A factor that is not typically taken into account in adjudication is the social or economic conditions of each country. So again, between Libya and Malta, arguments from Malta about the respective wealth of each country were to no avail...