Oil and gas: Cause of conflicts in the West Philippine Sea

The longstanding sabre-rattling and foreign policy posturing between Washington and Beijing about the West Philippine Sea is not just a conflict of ideology between Western democracy on the one hand, and Chinese socialism, on the other hand. The bottomline of the long standoff is 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These humongous natural resources are worth waging a global war.

China's unreasonable, illegal and even shameless occupation over the entire wide and vast maritime territory, using a generally-rejected nine dash line so-called historical claim, has been criticized and rebuffed by almost all members of the United Nations, the whole NATO and EU member states. And still, the Chinese government under the leadership of president Xi Jinping stubbornly insists on its whimsical, capricious and self-serving declarations. China's belligerence has continued to antagonize such neighboring countries in Asia-Pacific as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. China is becoming to be the big bad boy in Asia aided covertly by its cohorts, Russia and North Korea.

As early as the 1970s, most of the current claimants of portions of the so-called South China Sea have started to stake their adverse claims over Spratlys, which encompass vast natural resources and rich marine life very much suitable for fishing. The Philippines subscribes to the US doctrine that all claimant countries under the UNCLOS or United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea have complete freedom of navigation even across the EEZ or exclusive economic zones of specific countries. The Philippines rejects China's cavalier declaration that most of the waters are China's EEZ and no one is allowed by international law to conduct any intelligence operations or reconnaissance flights over that huge body of waters.

The Philippines is not claiming the entire 11 billion barrels of oil nor the 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Department of Energy data show that the total oil resources that should belong to the Philippines alone is an estimated 6,203 million barrels of total oil resources and only 12.158 billion cubic feet of total gas resources in the West Philippine Sea. Senator Win Gathalian declared during the Senate hearing a week ago that: " Given the persistent global energy shocks, it is important for us to ascertain the actual oil and gas potential in the West Philippine Sea." The senator is right that this government should work harder to gradually decrease the country's 98 percent dependence on imported oil products.

The real cause of conflict in the West Philippine Sea is the race for and clash over the exploitation and exploration of these waters for oil and natural gas. The Spratlys alone hold largely unexplored reserves of oil and natural gas which if tapped by us would cut by more than half our needs for energy sources. But China, despite the international arbitral award in favor of the Philippines, has continued with its massive dredging and construction in islands embraced within the scope of the Spratlys. China has rapidly constructed an airfield on the Fiery Cross Reef While continuing with its land reclamation activities.

In 1968, oil was discovered in the Spratlys. In 1970, the Philippines started to get serious with its claims over the area. We have stationed Philippine troops in three of the islands since a Filipino explorer, Tomas Cloma discovered what was called as the Freedom Land. In 1973, the Vietnamese stationed its own troops in five of the islands. In 1976, the Philippines discovered huge oil deposits off the coast of Palawan near the Spratly Islands. China and Vietnam had a direct confrontation also due to conflicting claims over oil and gas resources.

If there is going to be a third world war between the forces allied with the US and those partial to China, with the Philippines in between, the true bone of contention is oil and gas, not some romantic notion of nationalism or ideology. Oil and gas are the alpha and the omega for survival of this millennium.