SEN. Panfilo Lacson listed on Monday three serious threats posed by China in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), even as the lawmaker prodded the Duterte administration to enlist allied countries to press China’s compliance with an international court ruling upholding the Philippines territorial claims.
“China’s creeping cross-border encroachments well within the West Philippine Sea territory pose serious threats on three fronts,” Lacson warned. “Not one or two, but three: national security, food security, and economic security.”
The chairman of the Senate Committee on National Defense and Security aired the warning in a news statement, saying “These are the aspects of Philippine security that continue to be hit by China’s continued encroachment into our territorial waters in the West Philippine Sea.”
Moreover, Lacson lamented “more often than not, we only think of national security when we hear of China’s encroachment into our territorial waters. It’s actually much more than that… It has a great effect not only on our national security because that much is obvious—but our food security and our economic security are greatly affected.”
Presiding over a hearing of the Senate Committee on National Defense and Security, Lacson called on the Duterte administration to take “more proactive efforts by the Philippines to urge the international community to exert pressure on China to comply with the arbitral ruling favoring the Philippines.”
At the same time, the senator pressed his suggested option for maintaining “a balance of power in the region” with the Philippines “like-minded and militarily capable allies” referring to the United States, Australia and European Union, among others.
Lacson proposed, “One course of action we can take is to appeal to the international community to exert whatever political pressure they can have on China to comply with the ruling. It cannot be sought by war especially in this day and age of modern technological warfare where nobody wins.”
This as the committee tackled Lacson’s Senate Resolution 954 condemning China’s increasing intrusions into the Philippines’s territory and its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the WPS. Also in the agenda was Senate Bill 2289, which Lacson co-authored with Senate President Vicente Sotto III, defining the Philippines’s maritime areas.
Moreover, the senator noted fish production in the Philippines amounted to 4.36 million tons valued at P265 billion in 2018, while 1.9 million fisherfolk depended on fishing for their livelihood, with fishing accounting for P181.1 billion, or 29.1 percent of the ocean-based activities Gross Value Added in 2018.
Citing records, he cited the WPS’s region cumulatively supplied 27 percent of the Philippines’ total marine capture fisheries production, with Scarborough Shoal producing around 15 to 20 metric tons (MT) of fish produced per year. Apart from that, he added, the Kalayaan Island Group can produce 62,000 to 91,000 MT of fish per square kilometer, “accounting for the needs of up to 2.3 million Filipinos per year.”
On the other hand, Lacson lamented the Chinese incursions have also “kept us from fully harnessing our energy resources in the WPS,” particularly the Philippine Rise that is a potential source of natural gas and other resources such as heavy metals and metallic minerals.”
The senator noted this has yet to account for the ongoing contribution of offshore hydrocarbon sources to energy security, with the largest oil production from Galoc Field off Palawan – a total oil production of 21.15 million barrels as of June 30, 2018.
Meanwhile, he added the largest gas production of Malampaya amounts to 1.94 million standard cubic feet of gas and 75.04 million barrels of associate condensate, provided some 25.8 percent of the total power generated in Luzon from 2002 to 2017.
In addition, the lawmaker recalled a US geological survey in 2013 showing there are some 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 25.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in undiscovered resources in the Spratly Islands, while hydrocarbon reserves in Reed Bank is estimated at 55.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 5.4 billion barrels of oil. The Philippine Department of Energy estimated 165 million barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of gas in Recto Bank.
“So these are the big effects not only on our national security but our food security and our economic security are also greatly affected,” he pointed out.
Lacson, likewise, manifested that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invite resource persons to its next hearing, including Western Command head Vice Admiral Ramil Roberto Enriquez and Coast Guard commandant Vice Admiral Leopoldo Larroya, among others, saying: “they will be the ones to enforce relevant legislation on the WPS.”
Moreover, the senator manifested the need for the Senate to invite for its next hearing other personalities such as the captain of the fishing boat Gem-Ver-1 to provide lawmakers a personal view of problems such as the midnight ramming by Chinese vessel and “to share with us their actual experience,” recalling the four-ton fishing boat from Occidental Mindoro, Gem-Ver 1 was rammed by a Chinese trawler while anchored at Recto (Reed) Bank before midnight on June 9, 2019.