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APEC-Manila and South China Sea Joint Development Areas

By Stewart Taggart - posted Friday, 13 November 2015


Given this, look for use of creative syntax at the APEC meeting that might represent diplomatic code for discussion of Joint Development Areas (JDAs). JDAs exist all over the world. Two exist in the adjacent Gulf of Thailand just west of the South China Sea.

Under a Joint Development Area agreement, disputing national claimants to an offshore area agree to shelve their territorial differences indefinitely while they jointly develop the energy resources. Final territorial determination is postponed until the stakes are lower because the resources have been developed.

Given this, Joint Development Areas agreed between China and her South China Sea neighbors that link offshore oil and gas developments to downstream energy markets gas pipelines and electricity power lines solves several problems at once.

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Doing so will increase 'energy resilience' through expanding supply. It will create delivery efficiencies though deepening networks. And it will provide a cooperation framework reducing the risk of military conflict.

To date, uncertainty over South China Sea territorial issues has hindered systematic exploration and development of potential new oil and gas in the South China Sea. It's also hindered efforts to create deeply interconnected energy markets, a consensus goal of APEC members.

Were China to move toward acquiescence to joint development areas, it could open the way for using AIIB funding to build the Association of Southeaste Asian Nations (ASEAN)'s highly promising but long moribund ideas of a Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline and Trans-ASEAN Electricity Grid.

Both aim to create an Southeast Asian integrated electricity and natural gas infrastructure in a region with a population larger than the European Union and with a collective GDP that - were it a country - would be the world's seventh largest.

China's already has hinted Southeast Asia may be where the AIIB makes its first loan. As such, these Southeast Asian projects would be ideal for building 'energy resiliency' and opening the way for deeper China-ASEAN cooperation.

And bedding down all of this would be highly desirable to achieve before next year's anticipated ruling by a UN tribunal over the Philippines' assertion that China's claims to the entire South China Sea violate provisions of the United Nations Law of the Sea.

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This article was first published on the Grenatec blog.



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About the Author

Stewart Taggart is principal of Grenatec, a non-profit research organizing studying the viability of a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure. A former journalist, he is co-founder of the DESERTEC Foundation, which advocates a similar network to bring North African solar energy to Europe.

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