MANILA, Philippines -- The controversial Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU), the tripartite agreement among the Philippines, China and Vietnam to hunt for oil and gas in the South China Sea, has expired and the government has decided to leave it at that?for now.
?The agreement lapsed as of July 1 and it has not been extended,? said Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes in an interview on Thursday.
A Cabinet-level interagency committee tasked to determine what to do about the JMSU after it expires remains in existence, however. But its members have refused to talk to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, saying the issue was ?sensitive.?
Reyes said the government had decided to let the pact expire.
A three-year agreement that took effect in July 2005, the JMSU allowed the state oil firms of the Philippines, China and Vietnam to conduct a seismic study in disputed areas of the South China Sea, including the Spratly islands being claimed by the three countries and other nations.
The agreement covered 142,886 square kilometers and entailed seismic information acquisition, processing and interpretation, but did not include actual exploration.
In an earlier interview, Antonio Cailao, president of Philippine National Oil Co., a signatory to the agreement, said the entire area was in Philippine territory anyway.
He was quick to add, however, that the tripartite deal was purely a commercial agreement and not at all political, even with the inclusion of the disputed Spratlys.
Such an agreement also had precedent, he said.
?There have been many commercial contracts involving foreign entities and this was just another one of them. In other words, in the early days, there was a joint Australian-Philippine cooperation, a joint Norwegian-Philippine cooperation. Inviting other commercial entities of other nations was a very common practice,? he said.
The JMSU?an agreement among PNOC, China National Offshore Oil Co. and Vietnam Oil and Gas Corp.?was born of the need to find indigenous energy resources, not only for the country but for the region, he said.
