your say 'Suppose Brunei chooses to terminate the joint-venture agreement with Malaysia tomorrow? Or decides to sell away the oilfields tomorrow?'

 

PM No 5 explains oil deal to PM No 4

Kgen:

"Sovereign rights to the resources in this area now belong to Brunei but the agreement includes a commercial arrangement to allow Malaysia to jointly develop the oil and gas resources in Block L and M for a period for 40 years?"

Goodness! You gave away sovereign rights in exchange for a commercial arrangement? That means Brunei owns the oil and gas resources now?

Cala: Owning Blocks L and M oilfields versus as a joint-venture partner. What is the difference between the two? Can the two arrangements relating to oil extraction be the same?

To my mind, they are poles apart. Owning a property or a natural resource such as Blocks L and M confer on the owner four basic property rights:

i) control over its use;

ii) absolute entitlement of its future income streams;

iii) right to sell or to transfer the property; and

iv) right to stop others from entering the property

Do log into Wikipedia's entry on property . So how can the two be the same?

Suppose Brunei chooses to terminate the joint venture agreement with Malaysia tomorrow? Suppose Brunei decides to sell away the oilfields for a consideration of, say, RM100 billion tomorrow? Or suppose Brunei refuses to allow the entry of Petronas' workers into the oilfields tomorrow?

Block L and Block M oilfields are not private properties. They do not belong to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, or any individual cabinet minister. As such, it is really doubtful that the cabinet's decision to 'give away' the said properties/resource to Brunei is legal.

Can an unfair contract be made legal? Can an unfair contract be enforceable? Can an unfair contract be acceptable to Malaysians? Why should Malaysia, the legal owner of the oilfields give them up? Malaysia could have asked Brunei to come in as a joint-venture partner without giving them away.

For matter of such importance in scale, we need both parliamentary sanction and probably a referendum to approve the cessation of 'sovereign rights' of the two oilfields to Brunei.

Ong: I don't think people should simply listen to Dr Mahathir Mohamad and go hammering Abdullah without knowing all the facts. It is possible that Blocks L and M were not within Malaysian territorial waters or exclusive economic zones in the first place, and that Pak Lah decided not to battle Brunei at some international court and make Malaysia look like a fool one more time. It is possible that Pak Lah is not a pirate like his predecessor.

Suresh Samuel: Why are these two clowns fighting over an oil reserve which belongs to Sarawak, which Sarawakian and Sabahan have never benefited in the way that Brunei has?

Habib RAK: A very significant decision of this nature must have been made known to the rakyat prior to signing away sovereign rights. How can sovereign rights be signed away by the PM (who claims that the cabinet approved it)? This is nonsense.

What about the state of Sarawak? Did the state approve it? If yes, how was the approval done? I am shocked to hear the statement "Sovereign rights to the resources in this area now belongs to Brunei."

If this is true, why would Brunei want to share it with Malaysia? Very soon, Umno/BN will sell all of Malaysia for their selfish interests.

Pak Lah gave 'RM320b oil rich areas' to Brunei

James Lim: How can a president or prime minister of a country sign any agreement of this importance in his last month in office? The last month is for the former to hand over to the successor.

No important decisions are to be made because any decision made will be to the benefit of the retiring office holder. Knowing he is about to leave office, he could have struck a sweet deal with a huge payoff waiting for him after his last day?

Ramly Yussuff: Did Abdullah personally gain from the deal? Was he bribed to give away Malaysian territory? If so, he should be charged with treason.

Inspector Closseau: Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) should investigate this shocking revelation. It is almost equal to the 22 years of wastage by Mahathir (as alleged in ‘The Malaysian Maverick'), which took Abdullah only less than five years in office to commit.

Shefool: Abdullah is noted for coming out with silly decisions. He sold MV Augusta worth hundreds of millions of ringgit for 1 euro, which is equivalent to about RM4.

Disgust: The rakyat demands that all the letters of transactions be made public and a full disclosure be made immediately. This is totally shocking!

Yum: If he is correct, then we got Limbang back. How much oil is there in Limbang? Perhaps it was just a quid pro quo . I give you some areas in the sea, and you gave me the land. Maybe, net-to-net, it is close to zero. Before you and I get more facts of the matter, perhaps we should just give Abdullah the benefit of the doubt.

Anti-bodek: Umno-BN telah menjual maruah bangsa dan negara kita kepada dunia luar semata-mata isi poket mereka dengan alasan pembangunan. BN memang rakus. Tepuk dada tanya sendiri siapa pengkianat bangsa? Rakyat yang jadi mangsa.

Bangkitlah bangsa ku demi masa depan anak cucu kita supaya tak menjadi pengemis di tanah sendiri ini.

Sekigahara no tatakai: I really love all these BN statisticians, blurting out all those estimations and figures that definitely stun you. Remember last year our Federal Territories Minister Raja Nong Chik Raja Zainal Abidin claimed that Malaysia lost hundreds of millions of ringgit during the just few hours of strikes that happened in KL last year?

Never ever trust all these clowns.

Lesungbatu: I'd have thought that by having an ‘Oxford' guy telling you to do this and that, you'd be making brilliant decisions.

Petronas: Brunei invited us to develop Block L and M

Che: Come on Petronas, come on Abdullah, your wishy-washy information tells us nothing. Who owns blocks L and M now? Is that senile old man right, for a change?

 

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