Carpio links WPS resources to energy, food security

By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

Former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio said Thursday, March 26, that oil and gas from contested areas in the West Philippine Sea may help address the country’s power problems and support its food needs through fisheries.

Carpio reiterated the 2016 arbitral ruling in The Hague, Netherlands, which upheld the Philippines’ maritime entitlements under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and rejected any legal basis for China’s expansive claims beyond those limits.

He said the Philippines has a legitimate claim to more than 300,000 square kilometers of maritime area, which is slightly larger than the country’s total land area.

The Philippines owns the resources within that area, including fish, oil, gas and other mineral resources.

He said the area includes the Malampaya gas field, northwest of Palawan, which has supplied up to 40% of Luzon’s electricity needs.

Carpio also said the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone under the 2016 arbitral award includes Reed Bank, or Recto Bank, which he described as three times larger than Malampaya and capable of supplying a comparable share of Luzon’s power demand.

“The Reed Bank is three times larger than Malampaya, so it could supply around 40 percent of the energy required by Luzon, [and] that 40 percent translates around 20 percent of the energy requirement of the entire Philippines,” Carpio said.

“If you don’t get that gas, the 20 percent energy supply, […] we affect the entire country, because that is equivalent to our power supply nationwide. If your power supply here [Iloilo] is reduced by 20 percent you would get blackouts like you did,” he added.

He added that the West Philippine Sea also accounts for 20% of the country’s fish catch, and that losing access to those waters would force other areas to make up the shortfall.

Carpio visited Iloilo on Thursday to discuss historical maps tied to the Philippines’ claims in the West Philippine Sea, particularly the 1875 Carta General del Archipelago Filipino.

The former magistrate has said the map may help strengthen the Philippines’ claim over Panatag Shoal, also known as Scarborough Shoal, and the Kalayaan Island Group in the Spratlys.

The map was first published by the Direccion de Hidrografia in 1875 and included known contested areas such as Bajo de Masinloc and most of the Spratly Islands, including Thitu, or Pag-asa Island.

China has continued to invoke the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which did not include those island groups within the treaty lines, in arguing against the Philippines’ claims.

Carpio disputed that argument, saying Spain and the United States later signed the 1900 Treaty of Washington, which ceded islands of the Philippine archipelago outside the lines drawn in the 1898 treaty.