SC decision on ’05 SCS joint fuel exploration deal lauded

ENVIRONMENTAL groups on Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court’s decision declaring as unconstitutional the country’s 2005 Tripartite Agreement for Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) with China and Vietnam.

“For the environmentalists and people’s groups in our network, this decision spells stronger protection of the resources of the West Philippine Sea [WPS] and their preservation for the next generation,” Jon Bonifacio, National Coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-pne), said in a news release.

“This decision is also a big and concrete step in addressing the climate crisis, as it will serve as a deterrent to any plans…to explore fossil fuels in those waters,” Bonifacio added.

The group noted that during President Marcos Jr.’s trip to China last week, the Philippines and China reopened talks, begun in 2018, over the possibility of jointly developing oil and gas resources in the WPS, which is contested by China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand.

The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change, to which the Philippines is highly vulnerable. It is made up of many islands that can be submerged or flooded by sea level rise, stronger and more frequent typhoons are already causing disastrous f loods, and most Filipinos live on the country’s vast coastlines and depend on climate-sensitive natural resources, the group stated.

“We call on the Marcos administration to respect the High Court’s decision, and, at the same time, to put all his climate rhetoric into action by actually stopping all plans for fossil fuel exploration and development in the West Philippine Sea,” Bonifacio said.

The JMSU was signed in 2005 between China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Vietnam’s Oil and Gas Corporation (Petrovietnam) and the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC).

Under the undertaking, joint explorations were to be conducted in 142,886 square kilometers of the South China Sea covering the six islands claimed and occupied by the Philippines in Spratly—the islands of Pag-asa, Lawak, Kota, Patag, and Panata.

Because 80 percent of the JMSU site is within the Philippines’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone, progressive groups filed petitions seeking to declare the agreement unconstitutional.

Today, after 14 years, the SC declared that the JMSU violated the Constitution for allowing wholly-owned foreign corporations to explore the country’s natural resources without observing the safeguards provided in Section 2, Article XII of the 1987 Constitution. It voted 12-2-1.