South China Sea: New Philippine leader must honour joint exploration agreement with Beijing or face conflict, says Duterte
- Manila and Beijing agreed in 2018 to work out joint oil and gas exploration in contested waters without addressing the issue of sovereignty
- Duterte, who leaves his post on June 30, said ‘someone’ in China reminded him of the Memorandum of Understanding. ‘If that is changed, it’s going to be risky’.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told his successor that Manila must honour an agreement his administration made with China to jointly explore an area in the disputed South China Sea for oil and gas deposits – or face possible conflict.
He said that in light of the presidential election taking place in May, someone “reminded me – I won’t say who from China” that both sides already had an agreement on joint development of Reed Bank, also known as Recto Bank, which falls in a contested area of the South China Sea.
An international tribunal ruling on Manila’s unilateral challenge to Beijing’s claims in 2016 said Reed Bank was considered part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf, where Manila has exclusive sovereign rights.
It is an undersea feature that is 85 nautical miles from Philippines’ Palawan island but 595 nautical miles from China’s nearest land mass, Hainan, according to retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio. China has rejected the tribunal ruling.
But in November 2018, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Manila, both sides signed a “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development between the Philippines and China”.
They agreed to set up committees to work out how they could conduct joint oil and gas exploration without having to address the issue of sovereignty. Both sides committed to a deadline of signing a cooperation agreement by November 2019, but this has not taken place.
The MOU itself has never been officially released to the public but a leaked draft stated the involvement of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
