Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10) – Oil drilling at the contested Recto Bank will remain suspended, but the government will proceed with oil and gas exploration elsewhere, Energy Secretary Rapahel Lotilla said Tuesday.
The Duterte administration terminated in February 2022 its earlier talks with China for joint oil and gas exploration in the West Philippine Sea. During President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to Beijing last week, he and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to revisit the talks.
“The agreement was to resume negotiations or talks so we do not have any agreement on moving forward yet with the actual carrying out of activities in the Recto Bank,” Lotilla explained.
Recto Bank, also known as Reed Bank, is part of the Philippines 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone but is being contested by China.
READ: Marcos to Chinese President: PH wants to continue talks on joint exploration in WPS
The energy chief said oil and gas development in other areas will proceed.
“We will be open to foreign and domestic investors carrying out the development activities… In the case of PNOC Exploration Corp., [it] has announced an invitation for potential farm-ins to a number of service contracts that are under the control of the PNOC,” Lotilla said.
Marcos earlier noted that the country must continue exploration in the West Philippine Sea for energy resources.
During his visit to China, he urged Xi to continue the talks on joint oil and gas exploration.
“I really hope—I would very much like, as you have suggested, Mr. President, to be able to announce that we are continuing negotiations and that we hope that these negotiations will bear fruit because of the pressure upon not only China, not only the Philippines but the rest of the world to move away from the traditional fronts of power,” Marcos said.
Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin last year said the Philippines terminated the talks because it could not come at the price of sovereignty.
“We had both tried to go as far as we could without renouncing China’s aspiration on his part; and constitutional limitations on my part,” Locsin added.
Despite a territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea, the Philippines and China signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018 to conduct joint oil and gas exploration in the area.
In 2016, an international arbitral tribunal invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, including in the area Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.
China has refused to recognize the ruling, calling it “null and void.”
