Maps, stats needed on Recto Bank, etc.

Filipinos need basic info on the Recto Bank and Spratly issues. A good start is the government reuse of “West Philippine Sea” to refer to that part of the South China Sea within Philippine territory. Another old term for it, from old atlases, is “Luzon Sea”.

Also now in use are Filipino names for the islands, cays, reefs, shoals and banks that the Philippines possesses or claims. Like, Scarborough Shoal is Bajo de Masinloc, indisputably part of the town of Masinloc, Zambales, but which China tried to grab in 1997. Commodore is Rizal Reef, in Palawan’s southwest, where Malaysian frogmen in the 1980s planted their flag, prompting the Philippine Navy to shell it.

Still, Filipinos need a crash course on simple geology. Like, what’s the difference between an island and a cay, aside from the former having a fresh water source? Or if a shoal is but a bar astride or between coral reefs or rocks, and a bank is an elevation on a shelf.

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Kalayaan is a municipality of Palawan consisting of seven islets in the Spratlys occupied by Filipino troops, plus one reef. Established in 1978 by Presidential Decree 1596, it has one barangay, Pag-asa, the biggest island (37.2 hectares). A mayor and town council govern the 300 or so civilians, mostly fishermen, goatherds and scientists. Electricity is from a backyard of solar panels.

Pag-asa has an airstrip 1,260 meters long, adjacent to a seaport, for the Air Force and Navy to land troop supplies. The six other islets are Likas (18.6 has.), Parola (12.7 has.), Lawak (7.9 has.), Kota (6.45 has.), Patag (0.57 ha.), and Panata (0.44 ha.); Ayungin Reef completes the list.

The Kalayaan Island Group is within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This EEZ is delineated in PD 1599. But being at the edge of the Spratly archipelago, the Philippine claim is disputed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam. The three countries claim all of the Spratlys as theirs; Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines only some islets within their EEZs.

ASEAN and China signed in 2002 a Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. The pact calls for military restraint and joint exploration of the marine resources in the disputed Spratlys.

* * *

Recto (international name Reed) Bank, like Bajo de Masinloc and Rizal Reef, is indisputably within Philippine boundaries. It rests on the Philippine continental shelf, 80 miles (148 kilometers) off northwest Palawan.

Adjoining Malampaya, Matinsloc and Linapacan oil and gas wells, Recto Bank is said to contain similar fuel resources. This explains the belated claim on it by China, 876 miles (1,066 kilometers) distant. Explorations by British-owned Forum Energy estimated Sampaguita Field, in Recto Bank’s southern section, to hold 3.4 trillion cubic feet of gas, atop 440 million barrels of oil. This is slightly lower than Malampaya’s, the Philippines’ biggest field.

Forum Energy finally got a permit to mine gas only recently. For years, after financing the Recto Bank exploration at millions of dollars, the government refused to grant it a service contract. This was because President Gloria Arroyo included the Recto Bank in late 2004 in a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) with China.

Exposed only upon expiration in March 2008, the JMSU was criticized as unconstitutional. For it gave China, and later Vietnam, the right to explore Philippine natural resources. Although in the nature of an international treaty, the JMSU was never submitted to the Senate for ratification. Arroyo released $5 million a year for three years as Philippine contribution, without consent of the House of Reps.

* * *

Lawyers saw treason and plunder in the JMSU. The deal was supposed to be for joint exploration in “disputed waters” of the South China Sea, meaning the Spratlys. But four-fifths of the 142,886-square-kilometer coverage was in the Recto Bank. Arroyo in effect gave China the excuse to lay claim to the area that up until then was never disputed. In exchange, China gave the Philippines $2 billion a year in loans padded with at least 20-percent kickbacks. These were disguised in 65 anomalous deals, among them the NBN-ZTE and Diwalwal-ZTE scams, Northrail, Southrail, and the lease of a million hectares of farmlands to China.

In 2009 China included the Recto Bank and Palawan oilfields in its “nine-dash line” territorial assertion over most of the South China Sea. Since March 2011 it has intruded seven times in the Recto Bank and harassed Philippine exploratory and fishing vessels.

* * *

The government must publish, through popular media, a map of the disputed Kalayaan Islands and the Recto Bank. This would support its announcements of efforts militarily to secure Philippine territory and diplomatically to resolve overlapping claims.

In the meantime, professional and amateur cartographers might wish to plot the nine corners of the JMSU coverage, to see the sellout of Philippine territory:

CORNER                   LONGITUDE            LATITUDE

                  1                118º 00’ 00”               10º 52’ 00”

                  2                117º 00’ 00”               08º 55’ 00”

                  3                112º 54’ 00”               08º 55’ 00”

                  4                112º 54’ 00”               09º 50’ 00”

                  5                113º 57’ 00”               09º 50’ 00”

                  6                113º 57’ 00”               11º 10’ 00”

                  7                114º 32’ 00”               11º 10’ 00”

                  8                114º 32’ 00”               11º 56’ 00”

                  9                118º 00’ 00”               11º 56’ 00”

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