PETALING JAYA: National oil corporation Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) has affirmed its activities offshore Sabah and Sarawak lie within Malaysia’s sovereign territory and pushed back on China’s newly released 2023 Standard Map.
In the new map published yesterday, China appears to encroach into Malaysia’s oil and gas reserves by incorporating a significant portion of the territorial waters within the country’s exclusive economic zone near Sabah and Sarawak, as well as areas belonging to Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Petronas president and group CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik Aziz said the company’s activities in the eastern states are well within the confines of Malaysia’s sovereign territory.
“Our upstream activities are within our country’s sovereign rights. Petronas will very vigorously defend Malaysia’s rights to develop assets and energy reserves for its own energy security,” he told a media briefing on Petronas’s second quarter financial results today.
“However, I do note with interest that (China’s) reach has grown beyond its claims,” he added.
Petronas’s stance aligns with that of Wisma Putra which said Malaysia does not recognise the new map released by China’s ministry of natural resources and that it remains consistent in rejecting any claim on the nation’s maritime areas, based on the 1979 map of Malaysia.
“Malaysia is not bound to China’s 2023 standard map in any way,” the foreign affairs ministry said in a statement today.
“Malaysia is of the view that the South China Sea issue is a complex and sensitive matter. It must be handled in a peaceful and rational manner through dialogues and negotiations based on international laws, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” it added.
Meanwhile, Petronas reaffirmed its partnership with Sarawak’s state government in leveraging on the state’s hydrocarbon resources beyond those listed in the 2020 commercial settlement agreement (CSA).
This comes after speculation surfaced alluding to the replacement of Petronas by oil major Shell in the state’s hydrocarbon assets and carbon capture projects.
Tengku Muhammad said engagements are ongoing with the state on the matter. “We have a Sarawak state representative on the board (of Petronas) and coordination is done through platforms which are agreed.
“Furthermore, the dialogue is both formal and informal. Therefore, I don’t know why it is portrayed as an immediate substitution or replacement,” he said when responding to questions about Petronas’s position in Sarawak’s oil and gas industry. - FMT
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