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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA, Philippines - The Arroyo administration had unwittingly declared Recto Bank (Reed Bank) to be disputed territory by allowing its inclusion in the 2005 Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) entered into by the Philippines with China and Vietnam, Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office head Ramon Carandang said.
Carandang said this emboldened China to claim Recto Bank as part of its territory.
“It was like we ourselves admitted that Recto Bank is disputed territory. That gave China an opening,” he said. “Before the JMSU, nobody contested that the Reed Bank was ours.”
Carandang said part of the agenda of Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario’s visit to Beijing on Thursday is to re-assert the country’s sovereignty over Recto Bank since it is part of the 24,000 square kilometers of undisputed Philippine territory that was covered by the JMSU.
Recto Bank is about 80 miles (128.75 km) from Palawan and some 570 miles (917 km) from Hainan Island which is the closest land mass of China to the Philippines.
“We are not going to be the administration that lost Recto Bank,” he said.
Malacanang started using Recto Bank to refer to Reed Bank in a bid to assert the country's territorial claim over the area.
“The challenge is how to effectively take back the positions that the previous administration took without harming our bilateral relations with China and without eroding our sovereign integrity,” Carandang added.
Del Rosario, who was invited by his counterpart Minister Yang Jiechi, will be in China from July 7-8 where he will also meet with Vice President Xi Jinping.
“We expect to discuss the West Philippine Sea issue, although this particular issue in not the sum total of the Philippines' relations with China,” the foreign affairs chief said.
President Benigno Aquino III has earlier blamed the escalating tensions in the West Philippine Sea to the scrapped JMSU.
“What used to be a tiny bump of a controversy became a mountain of a problem for us,” Aquino said.
The President said Arroyo scrapped the JMSU after she was warned that she might be impeached for allowing the agreement to cover Philippine territory.
China protested the non-continuance of the JMSU twice, both of which were ignored by the Arroyo administration, Aquino said.
“The punch line is: we never responded to the protests. We ignored China,” the President added.
Oil and gas exploration
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said the Department of Energy (DoE) is studying the possibility of offering the Recto Bank area for oil and gas exploration since the disputed area is believed to contain vast oil reserves.
Almendras said that the government has no intention yet to offer any exploration contract for the Recto Bank area but the DoE is evaluating the data in preparation for future bidding.
"The study will take years. Hopefully, next year we can have some definite indications on that - the valuation of the seismic surveys," he said.
Almendras said the Philippines started to develop the Recto Bank since the 1970s and there have been previous studies on the presence of oil and gas in the area.
"The Recto Bank has been developed by the Republic of the Philippines since 1976, we have started exploring that area since 1976 and we have issued six service contracts. Five non-exclusive geo-technical evaluation. We have actually drilled seven wells in the area since 1976 to the present," he said.
Almendras said the data from the study would help government determine which areas to offer.
"That will really depend on when we have the final results of all the studies. When we cap it up, we will cap it up according to the results of the data," he said.
The energy official said initial studies showed encouraging results.
"The findings helped us decide to do more explorations and to do better analysis. Initial findings are very encouraging," he said.
Forum Energy Plc of the UK is presently the only existing service contractor within the Recto Bank.
"Right now, there's only one there, SC 72 (Service Contract 72)," he said.
Almendras said the department hopes to offer more contracts in the Recto Bank area by next year.
"No (other) service contract being offered within the Recto Bank. We're still in the process of finalizing the data. The studies need to be completed before we can offer. It's hard to offer when data is not available," he said.
Forum Energy earlier said that SC 72 is not situated in the disputed Spratlys Group of Islands. It said the contract is located in Recto Bank basin, which is closer to the island of Palawan.
It said that SC 72 is within the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) based on Republic Act No. 9522, or the Philippine Archipelagic Baseline Law which defines the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines and thus, affirms Philippine sovereignty and jurisdiction over these areas, which include SC 72.
Forum Energy has recently concluded a 550 square kilometer of 3D seismic and 2,200 line-Km of high resolution 2D seismic surveys over the block. SC 72 is estimated to contain 3.4 trillion cubic feet of petroleum reserves.
Lasting fuel reserve
Lawmakers on Wednesday proposed certain measures that would boost the country's fuel reserves.
Rep. Arnel Ty of the party-list LPG Marketers’ Association (LPG/MA) suggested that the government use a chunk of the P77.2-billion Malampaya fund to build a permanent emergency fuel stockpile that would cushion the country from future global oil shocks.
Ty said that at current crude oil prices, just one-fourth of the Malampaya fund, or P19.3 billion, would enable government to purchase and stash an emergency supply of fuel good for 15 days national consumption.
Ty, a member of the House energy committee, is author of House Bill 4526, which seeks to launch a national Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), to be established and maintained by the state-owned Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC).
Sen. Teofisto Guingona III made the same proposal contained in Senate Bill 159, with additional provisions.
While Ty’s bill specifically provides that funding for the SPR may be sourced from government royalties from the commercial exploitation of the country’s natural gas and oil deposits, such as those at the Malampaya offshore field in northwest Palawan, Guingona’s version proposes the sale of certain PNOC assets, if necessary, to raise extra cash for the SPR.
According to a Commission on Audit report, a special account for government royalties from the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power Project still had a residual cash balance of P77.187 billion as of December 31, 2010.
“Considering the availability of potential funding, government is now in a position to put up the emergency oil stockpile we’ve been pushing for,” Ty said.
“We have to create a state-controlled stockpile of refined petroleum products to secure our requirements – estimated at the equivalent of 300,000 barrels of oil per day – during a crisis,” he pointed out.
'Supplier of last resort'
Ty cited the need for government “to serve as the people’s supplier of last resort in the event of fuel shortages in the future.”
As proposed by Ty and Guingona, the PNOC would be required to install the SPR within 26 months after their bills are enacted. The reserve would initially store ready-to-use gasoline, diesel, and LPG.
Mandating the PNOC to set up the SPR would be consistent with the firm’s mandate, under Presidential Decree 334, to provide and maintain an adequate and stable supply of oil and refined fuel products for the domestic requirement, Ty said.
“The creation of the SPR will also give flesh to the country’s commitment under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Petroleum Security Agreement, which encourages members to build extra stockpiles and forge emergency oil-sharing agreements,” he added.
