The 'Spratly deal': facts & figures (1)

GOTCHA, Published in Philippines Star, Monday, March 10, 2008

Source: http://www.middlebury.edu/SouthChinaSea

The Spratlys in South China Sea is a flashpoint due to overlapping claims over the isles and waters known to contain oil and gas. RP claim: by virtue of long occupation of seven islets called Kalayaan, with Pagasa the biggest. Other claimants: China, Taiwan, three ASEAN states Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. All except Brunei have built fortresses. Firefights erupted between RP and Vietnam in the ’70s. Worse skirmishes sparked between China and Vietnam in same period to the ’90s.

China also claims isles beyond the Spratlys, close to Luzon well within RP’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone. China has built naval and air facilities on Mischief (Panganiban) Reef off Zambales, and Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal in Palawan. During monsoons, when RP military vessels can hardly patrol Palawan’s west coast, China puts buoys in Sabina (Bulig) Shoal and Commodore (Rizal) Reef.

Moves have been made to resolve claims peacefully. Most stirring: the “Declaration on Conduct of Parties in South China Sea,” by ASEAN and China, in 2002. Drafted by RP, it rallied the ten ASEAN states to stand as a bloc against China’s incursions and rising military presence in the region.

Two years later RP suddenly broke ranks from ASEAN and parleyed on its own with China. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rushed to Beijing on Sept. 1, 2004 to oversee the signing of an “Agreement for Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking in Certain Areas in South China Sea.” RP and China tried to hide the pact, couching press statements in vague diplomatese. Eg., “turn an area of potential conflict into a zone of cooperation.” Apart from covering the contested Spratlys, the pact included RP territory off Palawan not even claimed by China.

Vietnam got wind of the inclusion of its own Spratly claims in the area, and protested. RP and China appeased Vietnam by letting it in on the deal. A sequel “Tripartite Agreement for Joint Marine Scientific Research in Certain Areas in South China Sea” was signed on Mar. 14, 2005. Then-Speaker Jose de Venecia witnessed the event in a Makati hotel, along with then-Energy Sec. Vince Perez, Foreign Undersecretary Sonia Brady, Chinese ambassador Wu Hongbo, and Vietnamese ambassador Dinh Tich. The participants then reported to Arroyo in Malacañang.

Salient features and provisions:

• Contracting parties: state oil companies of China, Vietnam and RP, namely, China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), Vietnam Oil and Gas Corp. (PetroVietnam), and Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC).

• Signatories: In the 2004 pact, CNOOC president Fu Chengyu, and PNOC president Eduardo V. Mañalac. In 2005, CNOOC vice president Zhou Shouwei, PetroVietnam CEO Tran Ngoc Canh, and again PNOC’s Mañalac.

• Agreement term. “Three years from start of implementation,” with 90 days immediately thereafter to renegotiate extension or new pact. If so, the deal must expire this Friday, Mar. 14, 2008. But there’s a view that implementation commenced only July 14, 2005, when the PNOC assigned subsidiary PNOC-Exploration Corp. as implementer. That same day the energy department granted PNOC-EC a license to explore Palawan waters. Still another interpretation is that the pact ends 90 days after July 14, 2008, the renegotiation period.

Expiry date is important for private firms that aim to extract gas from Palawan waters thrown into the agreement area. China, invoking the pact, resists such drilling in Palawan by firms that were granted survey rights well before the 2004 or 2005 signings. Drilling in RP waters could provoke the Chinese Navy to steam in and enforce “joint rights” over the area.

• Agreement area: 142,886 sq km of South China Sea, detailed in Annex A, encompassing the Spratlys and the Philippine continental shelf off Palawan. Continental shelf is that strip of submerged land from the coast to the point where it begins to slope down to the seabed. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, such shelf is part of an archipelagic nation’s territory.

• Annex A: a one-page “Location of the Agreement Area.” Two maps, of South China Sea and of Spratlys, show the nine-cornered area to be just off Palawan’s west, straddling its entire coast, with coordinates.

Corner		Longitude		Latitude
1		118º 00' 00"		10º 52' 00"
2		117º 00' 00"		08º 55' 00"
3		112º 54' 00"		08º 55' 00"
4		112º 54' 00"		09º 50' 00"
5		113º 57' 00"		09º 50' 00"
6		113º 57' 00"		11º 10' 00"
7		114º 32' 00"		11º 10' 00"
8		114º 32' 00"		11º 56' 00"
9		118º 00' 00"		11º 56' 00"

Barry Wain, in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Jan-Feb. 2008), reported that one-sixth of the area is RP territory not even claimed by China or Vietnam. Plotting the coordinates, it is only 25 km away from Palawan’s southern town of Balabac. (More on Wednesday)

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E-mail: jariusbondoc@workmail.com