Philippines urged to tap South China Sea reserves to ease energy costs despite Beijing tensions

While some analysts agreed that now was the right time to “quickly develop” the maritime region’s resources, others warned that “political considerations” must be taken into account given Manila’s territorial disputes with Beijing and the failure of prior joint energy agreements.

Ang, owner of Malaysian petroleum firm Petron and president of the Philippines’ largest conglomerate by sales Top Frontier Investment Holdings, Inc., said on Monday that oil prices were cheaper in neighbouring countries due to government subsidies.

Ang noted that Manila’s oil production capabilities were dwarfed by that of neighbouring countries.

“Our own oil production is only 6,000 barrels per day, compared to our neighbouring countries’ average of 1 million barrels a day,” he said.

Edmund Tayao, a political analyst and political-science professor at the San Beda Graduate School of Law in Manila, said that while there might be economic pressures to expand energy production in the West Philippine Sea, there were other risk factors to take into account.

“This is not just an economic and business issue. Since suspected sources are in disputed areas, political considerations must be factored in, making it a challenging situation,” Tayao told This Week in Asia.

Two weeks ago, former Supreme Court associate justice Antonio Carpio told ABS-CBN News that the Philippines could explore the oil and gas at Reed Bank, located to the north-east of the Spratly Islands, if it had help from the US to prevent harassment from China’s coastguard.

According to a March 2023 report by the United States Energy Information Administration, Reed Bank could hold up to 10 billion barrels of petroleum products and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas. Once developed,