Deputy Prime minister Sok An (R) meets with Pichai Naripthaphan, Energy Minister of Thailand to discuss joint oil exploration and development.
PHNOM PENH, December 30, 2011 (AFP) - Cambodia and Thailand sought Thursday to revive long-stalled plans for joint offshore energy exploration along their disputed sea border, with Phnom Penh saying it wanted a deal "very soon".
Politics and the occasional border clash between the neighbours have for years got in the way of solving a lingering dispute about overlapping claims to undersea oil and natural gas fields in the Gulf of Thailand.
But ties between the two have eased significantly in recent months, sparking fresh hopes that a deal can be reached to finally allow both countries to tap into the potentially rich reserves.
Cambodia says that it is sitting on an estimated hundreds of millions of barrels of crude and three times as much natural gas, although observers say it remains unclear how much could be recovered and what the revenues would be.
"As both countries need income from oil and gas, we should reach an agreement very soon," Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said after meeting his Thai counterpart in Phnom Penh to discuss re-starting the talks.
Thai Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said after meeting Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, who heads the National Petroleum Authority: "We hope that in the future we're able to work on the overlapping claims area."
Once "some processes" were finalised, he told reporters, "the oil and gas will come out in eight to 10 years, not now".
Cambodia and Thailand first opened negotiations to jointly develop the disputed area in 1995, but they hit problems when ex-Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a military coup in 2006.
Angered by Phnom Penh's decision to briefly appoint Thaksin as an economic adviser, and amid a festering border dispute near an ancient temple, Bangkok in 2009 decided to cancel a 2001 memorandum of understanding.
Tensions have eased markedly since Thaksin's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, came to power in August.
Impoverished Cambodia said it hopes to begin pumping oil in December 2012 from offshore fields outside the contested zone, with exploration agreements with US energy giant Chevron and French oil company Total already in place.
Cambodia was feted as Southeast Asia's next petro-state after oil was discovered there by Chevron in 2005, but progress stalled amid apparent wrangling between the government and Chevron over revenue sharing.
3 comments:
In this picture...Thai look stronger than Khmer!
6:38AM, you are completely wrong!
They both bow down to one another. A sign of respect. It does show Khmer bow down slightly more than Thai but not much.
Look at Sok An he look very cowed when meeting Thai leaders, but he was very pompous when dealing with his Khmer officials, they have to bow to him, but here he bowed to Thai minister who his more junior than him. Sok An is deputy PM and the Thai guy is just a minister of energy only. An the other thing is this Thai guy is just his guest visiting Cambodia and his office, so Sok An should be the one who should be more confident, not cowed like what we've seen in this picture.
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