Abstract
Interest in the potential of South-East Asia’s petroleum resources dates back to over a century. Drilling for oil began in 1872 in West Java,1 and production began in 1893.2 The first well in Burma was drilled in 1887.3 The Miri field in Sarawak was discovered in 1910,4 and production began in 1911.5 Exploration for oil in Brunei began in 1911 in what is now known as the Belait anticline, and oil was discovered in the Seria field in 1929.6 Initial attempts to find oil in the Philippines in commercial quantities were made in 1896 but no commercial discovery has been made as this is written.7 Interest shifted to the off-shore resources of East Asia in the 1960s, and exploration activity intensified in the late 1960s and early 1970s, involving millions of dollars and thousands of people. This flurry of activity in South-East Asia’s seabed may be attributed to technological and economic factors.
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References
Soembarjono, Ministry of Mines, Indonesia, ‘Petroleum offshore activities and availability of natural gas in Indonesia’, in United Nations, ECAFE, CCOP, Report of the Sixth Session, 1969 (Bangkok), p. 113.
U.S. Embassy, Indonesia Petroleum Report, 1973/74 (Jakarta: July 1974), p. 3.
‘Status and methods of petroleum exploration in Burma’, in United Nations, ECAFE, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Development of Petroleum Resources of Asia and the Far East, Mineral Resources Development Series No. 10 (New York: 1959), p. 98.
Ng Shui Meng, The Oil System in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1974), p. 17.
F.W. Roe, ‘British territories in Borneo’, in United Nations, ECAFE, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Development of Petroleum Resources of Asia and the Far East (New York: 1959), p. 81.
M.S. Michie, ‘The search for oil in Brunei’, in Petroleum di-Brunei (Brunei Shell Petroleum Company, April 1975).
Cora Siddayao, ‘Looking for oil in the Philippines’, Esso Eastern Review (New York City: June 1966), p. 3. See footnote 27 of Chapter 1.
The term continental margin is the geological term used to refer to the prolongation of the continental land mass into the ocean (see Fig. 1). It is composed of the continental shelf, the continental slope, and the continental rise. Beyond the continental margin is what is referred to as the abyssal plain. Definitions of the latter four will be made as they first appear subsequent to this. Unless otherwise footnoted, definitions are from three sources: S.E. Frezon, U.S. Geological Survey, Summary, 1972 Oil and Gas Statistics for Onshore and Offshore Areas, 151 Countries, Professional Paper 885 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974), pp. 2–3;
Evan Luard, The Control of the Sea-Bed (London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1974), pp. 29–30; and John Temple Swing, ‘Who will own the oceans?’, Foreign Affairs, April 1976, pp. 528–46.
‘Economic significance, in terms of seabed mineral resources, of the various limits proposed for national jurisdiction’, Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations dated 4 June 1973, for submission to the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Sea-Bed for Ocean Floor Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction (Doc. A/AC. 138/87), partially reproduced in Table 20–1, in the U.N., ESCAP, CCOP Report of the Tenth Session, 1973, p. 186. In this paper the term ‘resources’ is distinguished from the term ‘reserves’. The term ‘resources’ refers to concentrations of petroleum discovered, undiscovered, and surmised to exist in such form that extraction is currently or potentially feasible. The term ‘reserves’ refers to that subset of resources that not only already have been identified by geological or engineering methods but can also be produced at a profit and can be legally extracted at the time of reporting. The distinction is important, because while oil resources as a whole are non-renewable depletable resources, proved reserves may increase or decrease depending on the discovery of new locations of accumulations of oil resources and development of such discoveries. See Corazón M. Siddayao, ‘Patterns in the utilization of the major energy resources of the United States’, report written for the Ford Foundation, June 1974, pp. 3 and 4, partially reproduced in ‘Appendix D—major energy resources’, A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future (Ballinger Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 477–84.
M. Mainguy, ‘Regional geology and petroleum prospect of the marine shelves of eastern Asia’, in CCOP, Technical Bulletin, No. 3, May 1970, p. 103.
See K. Romimohtarto, A.G. Ilahude, and A. Notji, ‘Marine research in Indonesia with special reference to the National Institute of Oceanology (L.O.N.)’, in Report of the Ninth Session, 1972, of the EC AFE, Committee for Coordination of Joint Prospecting in Mineral Resources in Asian Waters (CCOP), Bangkok, 1973, p. 76.
See United Nations, ECAFE, CCOP, Technical Bulletin, Volume 2, issued May 1969, and Volume 3, issued May 1970.
See A.G. Hatley, ‘Offshore petroleum exploration in East Asia—an overview’, Proceedings of Offshore Southeast Asia Conference, SEAPEX Programme Paper I (Singapore, 1976).
‘The prospects for petroleum in the Federation of Malaya’, in United Nations, ECAFE, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Development of Petroleum Resources of Asia and the Far East (Bangkok, 1959).
Ranking by Scottish Council Survey, Table II, in ‘Over 20 million b/d in the 1980’s?’, Petroleum Economist, February 1976, pp. 49–51.
Mainguy, op. cit., p. 92.
Petroleum News S.E.A., July 1973, p. 40.
Ibid., p. 34.
UN, ESCAP, CCOP, Report of the Twelfth Session, 1975, p. 6.
CCOP, Report of the Tenth Session, 1973, p. 185.
These figures were obtained by the author from a drilling superintendent in Burma, March 1976. The US$40 000 figure does not include salaries of oil company personnel monitoring the drilling operation. Total company cost of drilling in Thai waters was reported to exceed US$100 000 per day. See Petroleum News S.E.A., March 1977, p. 7.
Hatley, op. cit.
‘Searching for Oil and Gas in Asia’, in Leon Howell and Michael Morrow, Asia, Oil Politics and the Energy Crisis (New York: IDOC/North America, 1974), p. 60.
Cal-Asiatic-Topco agreement, see Petroleum News S.E.A. Annual, 1976, p. 17, and Sritua Arief, The Indonesian Petroleum Industry (Jakarta: Sritua Arief Associates, 1976), p. 518.
Howell and Morrow, op. cit., p. 60.
Many sources speak of a 20 per cent share, but this is obviously based on 1972 production when off-shore output accounted for close to 18 per cent of total output. See UN, World Energy Supplies, Stat. Series J, No. 19, p. 193.
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Siddayao, C.M. (1980). The Off-shore Petroleum Resource Potential of South-East Asia. In: The Off-Shore Petroleum Resources of South-East Asia. Natural Resources of South-East-Asia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6855-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6855-7_2
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