FEC Resources Inc (FECOF)

[hain]

CNOOK buy Forum Energy ?

While such comments appear to be blanket denials, Locsin’s
reference to the Department of Energy (DOE) is significant.
One way China could bypass Locsin’s department would be for state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to buy a chunk of Forum Energy (mainly owned by Philippine listed PXP Energy Corporation
). Forum acquired from the DOE ‘Service Contract No. 72’, which gives it the right to explore and extract oil and gas in an area that includes Reed Bank in the South China Sea.

According to acting Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Carpio, who has made the South China Sea conflict a personal focus, CNOOC does not only want 50 per cent ownership of Forum but “sovereignty” over the Reed Bank.

He said its ambitions would contravene both the Philippines’ constitution and the July 2016 decision by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which ruled in favour of Manila in its sovereignty dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea.

“I think the DFA has not found a formula for joint development with China that complies with the constitution and does not waive Philippine sovereign rights under the arbitral ruling,” said Carpio, who helped prepare Manila’s case for the tribunal.

He said sovereignty could only be drawn from land features or from the “territorial sea”, which the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines as the belt of coastal waters up to 12 nautical miles from a country’s baseline.