Nationwide oil firm Petronas is amongst plenty of corporations trying to drill within the Tun Mustapha Marine Park (TMP), a marine protected space that was gazetted by the Sabah authorities lower than a decade in the past, a report by Kuala Lumpur-based RimbaWatch finds.
RimbaWatch recognized the potential drilling web site by overlaying a map of potential oil and gasoline exploration websites printed by Petronas with knowledge on the marine protected space in Sabah. Petronas has estimated that 4.4 billion barrels of oil equal – a couple of quarter of Malaysia’s remaining reserves – are to be extracted in a block of the ocean positioned nearly solely within the TMP, often known as SB-403.
Proposed oil and gasoline extraction websites throughout the Tun Mustapha Marine Park [click to enlarge]. Supply: Rimbawatch
The state oil big was awarded a manufacturing sharing contract to develop fossil gas assets in block SB-403 with mining agency E&P Malaysia Enterprise and Sabah state oil firm SMJ Vitality in January of this yr.
Petronas mentioned then that the SB-403 exploration block was one in all six to be developed in Sarawak and Sabah which can be aligned with the corporate’s efforts to make sure power safety and underlie its “dedication in direction of a decrease carbon future.”
RimbaWatch famous that Petronas didn’t state in its communications that the SB-403 exploration block was positioned in a gazetted nature reserve.
Tun Mustapha Marine Park is classed as a Class VI marine protected space by the Worldwide Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which suggests pure assets inside it have to be sustainably managed with the intention of preserving biodiversity over the long run. Oil and gasoline extraction doesn’t align with the goals of IUCN Class VI protected areas, and zoning plans for the park solely allow small-scale, low-impact actions together with non-destructive conventional fishing, sport fishing and parasailing.
Nonetheless, based on the exploration map printed by Petronas, the fossil gas prospects and wells in SB-403 are all positioned straight contained in the TMP’s borders. This exhibits that exploration exercise has already occurred within the park and wells have been established, Rimbawatch mentioned in its report, printed on Wednesday.
TMP is Malaysia’s largest marine park, protecting an space of round 900,000 hectares. It has been recognized as a precedence seascape within the coral triangle due to its biodiversity, and contributes to 2 share factors of Malaysia’s nationwide goal of conserving 10 per cent of its coastal and marine areas.
Drilling within the park would put 45,000 hectares (ha) of coral reefs, 17,000 ha of mangroves, and over 180 weak and endangered species in danger, together with inexperienced turtles and dugongs, the non-profit warned.
Extraction exercise would additionally threaten the livelihoods of over 85,000 villagers, together with from the Bajau Laut and Bajau Ubian Indigenous communities. Primarily based on a map produced by WWF-Malaysia, a conservation group that helped develop the TMP as a marine protected space, a big portion of the TMP’s conventional fishing grounds are positioned within the western portion of the park, near the proposed oil and gasoline wells.
There isn’t any publicy obtainable environmental impression evaluation (EIA) for the deliberate drilling tasks, and Rimbawatch highlighted that each one oil and gasoline subject developments in Malaysia require an EIA. Any exercise in a nationwide or state park requires a second EIA, which might additionally contain a public session course of. RimbaWatch famous that the deliberate work in SB-403 shouldn’t be listed on the Division of Surroundings’s EIA database.
The Sabah Parks division and the Sabah state authorities had not responded to queries from Eco-Enterprise on the time of publication.
Petronas declined to touch upon the findings. WWF-Malaysia additionally has not responded to queries.
Rimbawatch famous that new oil and gasoline extraction shouldn’t be suitable with the 1.5°C goal set out by the Paris Settlement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change has warned that oil and gasoline extraction places the planet on a tragectory for 3.2°C of warming by 2100.
The deliberate drilling within the TMP additionally jars with Petronas’ said decarbonisation ambition, which is to cut back emissions to internet zero by 2050, a goal set in 2020. A United Nations Excessive-Degree Skilled Group report has mentioned that these internet zero commitments are “solely incompatible with continued funding in fossil fuels”, and that companies can not declare to be internet zero whereas persevering with to extract fossil fuels. Neither EPMV or SMJ Vitality have an emissions goal.
RimbaWatch has known as on the Sabah Parks division to work with Sabah state authorities to make sure that no oil and gasoline exploration permits within the park are authorized. The nonprofit mentioned Petronas ought to decide to excluding oil and gasoline exploration in protected areas.
