A senator has accused former law minister Zaid Ibrahim and Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Karim of misleading the public over the Petroleum Development Act and Sarawak’s authority over its oil and gas resources.
Senator Ahmad Ibrahim contended that the law, which vests Petronas with sole rights over oil and gas reserves, had been valid only while Malaysia was under emergency rule from 1969 to 2011, the Borneo Post reported.
He said the Petroleum Development Act became invalid in Sarawak, and state law was applicable again when all emergency declarations were revoked by the Najib Razak government in 2011.
Ahmad said Zaid and Hassan had “conveniently ignored” the fact that the law only applied because of emergency rule, which he said granted Parliament “super-authority” to impose the law and sideline Sarawak’s rights.
In normal times, the law would have been constitutionally invalid, since natural resources were under state jurisdiction. When emergency rule ended, Sarawak’s own laws such as its Oil Mining Ordinance 1958, were restored, he said.
“Those who deny this reality are clinging to nostalgia for federal overreach, while the people of Sarawak are moving forward, defending their sovereignty over land and natural resources as equal partners in Malaysia,” he was quoted as saying.
He said the validity of the Petroleum Development Act in Sarawak became open to challenge, since its “emergency justification” had disappeared.
The federal and state governments have been in dispute over oil and gas rights in Sarawak and in a podcast last night, Zaid said that the Petroleum Development Act was the supreme law: he contended that it was unfair that Sarawak could not accept what the law stipulated.
Hassan said he had in parliamentary questions asked the federal government how far it would go to defend the Petroleum Development Act, as Sarawak and Petros were questioning the role of Petronas under the act.
Ahmad said Zaid and Hassan were trapped in the “emergency-era mindset”, where federal supremacy was not questioned for 42 years.
“But that era is over. Malaysia has returned to normal constitutional order. Sarawak now rightly enforces its authority under the Malaysia Agreement 1963, the mining ordinance and the Sarawak Land Code.”
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg said they had agreed on the state-owned Petros being the sole aggregator of gas in the state, while both governments would recognise the Petroleum Development Act as “a federal Act as stated in the provisions of the law”.
