THE Philippines and China failed to arrive at a firm agreement to start joint exploration anytime soon in parts of the South China Sea (SCS), but are keeping their options open to “possible energy cooperation” under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed on Tuesday during the visit of President Xi Jinping to Manila, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. said.
Locsin read aloud in a television interview on Thursday some parts of the Philippines-China MOU on Oil and Gas Development, which topped 29 documents signed during Xi’s historic visit. The government had been asked by some quarters to reveal the full text of the oil-gas MOU immediately, amid growing anxiety over China’s real design, considering its rejection of a 2016 ruling by a United Nations tribunal invalidating its “nine-dash line” claim where it bases its claim over nearly 90 percent of the SCS.
According to Locsin, the deal signed during the state visit of Chinese leader Xi “merely seeks to study and discuss the prospects of a possible energy cooperation between the two countries.”
Speaking to CNN Philippines, Locsin read a part of the MOU, which he said he drafted, saying both governments agreed to establish “an intergovernmental joint steering committee” to look into possible energy cooperation.
The committee—to be co-chaired by the foreign ministries and co-vice chaired by the vice ministries—“will be responsible for negotiating and agreeing on the cooperation arrangements in maritime areas to which they will apply, and deciding the number of working groups to be established and for which part of the cooperation area each working group is established.”
“Each working group will negotiate and agree on inter-enterpreneurial, technical and commercial arrangements that will apply in the relevant working area,” the country’s top diplomat said, reading from the MOU that he signed with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
There was speculation that a final agreement on joint exploration was to be signed during the Xi visit, but both nations settled instead for an MOU.
‘Chinese draft’
Hours before Xi’s visit, opposition Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV gave reporters a copy of an earlier draft of a supposed framework agreement on the oil exploration deal that was drafted by the Chinese government.
Responding to questions from CNN Philippines’s The Source host Pinky Webb, Locsin said there was a Chinese draft, but the copy from Trillanes was not it. At any rate, he said, what was signed last Tuesday was the Philippine draft, which he wrote.
The Philippines and China have so far failed to agree to a joint exploration and development of possible hydrocarbon deposits in the disputed waters because of constitutional constraints on the part of the Philippines.
Moreover, the Philippines has been advised by lawyers and experts that any move it makes must take into consideration the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled that China’s historic claims to most of the contested area is illegal.
A poll released by the Social Weather Stations on November 20, as Xi arrived in Manila, showed 85 percent of Filipinos rejected the Philippine government’s inaction against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, including in areas that belong to
the Philippines.
On Wednesday the petitioners in a 2008 suit before the Supreme Court asked the SC to rule on the constitutionality of an earlier similar cooperation agreement that the Philippines signed with China and Vietnam, called the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking. While the JMSU had lapsed, the petitioners said the high court must still rule on its constitutionality and not invoke the moot and academic principle, because fundamental questions raised in the JMSU petition are also at issue in any current cooperation pact with China.
MOU outlines
Under the MOU signed on Tuesday, Locsin said each working group that will look into a possible exploration deal between the Philippines and China “will consist of representatives from enterprises authorized by the two governments.”
The China National Offshore Oil Corp. and the Philippine National Oil Co. will also be involved.
Locsin said the two governments are hoping to agree on the cooperation arrangements “within 12 months of this memorandum of agreement.”
“All discussions, negotiations and activities of the two governments, or the authorized enterprises under or pursuant to this Memorandum of Understanding, will be without prejudice to the respective legal positions of both governments,” Locsin said, quoting the MOU.
The MOU also explicitly says that it “does not create rights or obligations under international or domestic law.”
The legal opposition and critics of the Duterte administration have warned that any deal with China in the West Philippine Sea—a name adopted by Manila to refer to areas in the South China Sea that fall within its territory —that can undermine the country’s sovereignty is a violation of the Philippine Constitution.
Xi’s historic state visit to Manila on November 20 and 21—the first for a Chinese leader in 13 years—led to the signing of multibillion-dollar infrastructure loans for the administration’s “Build, Build, Build” program.
This, the Palace said, signals the improved ties between the two countries, which had soured during the previous administration that haled China before a UN tribunal.
“Suing China was a slap in the face of the Chinese, who value ‘saving face,’ according to a Foreign Affairs veteran who asked not to be identified.
From 2013 to 2016, relations between the Philippines and China had hit rock bottom as the proceedings in The Hague continued.
But before Manila sued, China had already been prohibiting Filipino fishermen from going near the Scarborough Shoal, a traditional fishing ground of many Southeast Asian nations. In April 2012 a standoff ensued in the area, despite supposed backchannel missions to Beijing that Trillanes said he conducted at the behest of then-President Benigno S. Aquino III.
The standoff ended with a supposed agreement by both Manila and Beijing to leave the area, but only the Philippine Navy pulled out, and China kept a blockade.
Trillanes, despite prodding from then-Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to render even at least a confidential report “to your mother institution [Senate]” on his backchannel missions for the Executive branch, pointedly said then he will not render a report to the Senate.
Six years after that televised argument with Enrile, Trillanes this week called on the Duterte administration to be transparent. He coauthored a resolution with Sen. Kiko Pangilinan asking the government to reveal the contents of any agreement with China before signing; and he reiterated this when he gave copies to media of the supposed “Chinese draft” that was allegedly leaked to his office.
Since President Durterte assumed office in June 2016, he has set aside the favorable ruling by the UN tribunal, which he said he will raise at a proper time, and has moved to mend ties with China.
Duterte then visited China twice instead of going to Washington, D.C., deemed a rite of passage by previous Filipino presidents.
Under Aquino, the Philippines has been the most vocal critic of China’s aggressive actions in the disputed waters and challenged its sweeping territorial claims through arbitration and stepped up military engagements with its treaty ally, the United States.
Duterte parried criticisms of his “soft” approach to China, arguing that the Philippine military is so emasculated that there is no way we could win a shooting war against the Asian giant.
“The conflict in the South China Sea is not the sum total of our friendship with China,” said then Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano, echoing the stand of Malacañang.