Any joint exploration for oil and gas in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) between the Philippines and China is uncertain.
This uncertainty was defined by a recent Supreme Court (SC) decision on the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU), which stressed that any agreement should be governed by the 1987 Constitution, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, former chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said.
There are proposals for constitutional amendments to do away with the 60-40 sharing agreement. Sixty percent or the bigger piece of the pie goes to the Philippines while the 40 percent to a foreign entity or entities.
The recent agreement forged during a recent trip to China by President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. had both countries agreeing to open lines of negotiations for a joint exploration agreement.
But China has not budged an inch from its historical claim over the most parts of the South China Sea, including the WPS.
China continues to reject a United Nations (UN) arbitral court ruling rejecting China’s historical claim over most parts of the vast South China Sea.
During a TV interview on the WPS issue, Gatchalian said that the SC had ruled that any exploration, whether it's pre- exploration or it's the main exploration, is considered an exploration.
‘’And if you are going to explore, develop and utilize resources under our exclusive economic zone, also within our territorial jurisdiction, it should be under full control and supervision of the State which is the Philippines,’’ he pointed out.
‘’So meaning any activity there, our government should be the one revising and it should be under our local laws and Constitution,’’ he added.
Gatchalian emphasized that he is not so optimistic that a joint exploration could move forward.
‘’What our country and China wants to do is to study all the complications and study how to move forward but then again, the Supreme Court decision sets the parameters on what they should be looking at, and it becomes the minimum requirement for any joint exploration moving forward,’’ he pointed out.
‘’If you're talking about the agreement between China and the Philippines there is no agreement. In fact, the Philippines, our country, the Philippines and China have been working on this agreement for a very long time, I think almost four to five years already. What we have is only an understanding that we will jointly explore oil and gas within our territory and within our exclusive economic zone. It's just an understanding, it's even more superficial than understanding. It's just something that we both agree that we should do, but in terms of the details, which laws, and how to do it, there is no there is no formal document yet,’’ he added.
Gatchalian said that the last administration tried very hard to move forward with the joint exploration.
‘’Obviously, after four years, nothing happened and obviously, it's more complex than what they thought and obviously, there are a lot of things that they cannot agree on. One of which is the law that should be governing the joint exploration. And our country has been very, very firm that it should be within our local laws, and it should be within the parameters of our Constitution,’’ he added.