Cambodia's Oil
Resources Located in Diputed Territory in the Gulf of Thailand
Who owns the oil and gas to be found in the Gulf of Thailand? Both Cambodia and Thailand claim territory and talks are dragging.
The discovery of oil and gas in Cambodian territory in the Gulf of Thailand should help to power the country’s aspirations towards becoming Southeast Asia’s newest tiger cub. No one quite knows how much oil there is in the block administered by Chevron, but figures of 700 million barrels are being bandied about. That is good and it would help Cambodia’s fledgling and problematic democracy to spread social and economic development across the country and help to strengthen the peaceful political settlement. Yet that amount of oil is likely to be dwarfed by what may be found further west, in territory contested both by Cambodia and western neighbour Thailand.
Borders in mainland Southeast Asia have throughout history been only vaguely used and essentially porous. The River Mekong might form a useful border between parts of Laos and Thailand, for example, but where such a natural border does not exist, no border was formally put into place. The very low level of population density throughout the region meant that kings and princes sought to control people and communities and the difficult terrain (being mostly thickly-forested mountains or swampland) in between communities was of little or no interest. Indeed, it was not until the French colonization of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia that a formal border of any real sort was drawn, driven by the European powers whose states were based on territory owned. The border-demarcations were tainted by hatred and fear of the colonists and all sides harboured suspicions of the others. The consequence is that borders remain contested today.
In the Gulf of Thailand, both countries claim ownership of the waters under which it has been widely-reported that the potential for as yet unconfirmed oil and gas fields exists is significant. Oil companies from both west and east hover in the area, tending their pitches and awaiting breakthroughs in talks. Yet talks remain stubbornly difficult, not least because of the intransigent nature of the Thai military junta, which seized control of the country in September 2006 in an armed coup. The previous democratically-elected Thai Rak Thai administration made some progress in this respect between 2001 and 2003, at which point misrepresented remarks by a Thai actress concerning ownership of an ancient temple led to a conflagration of protests in which the Thai Embassy was attacked and may Thai businesses were burned to the ground. The Cambodian government was subsequently persuaded to make reparations but dialogue has not subsequently been successful. A low level of political sophistication on both sides of the border does not help and the oil, if it is there, remains unclaimed.
