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Dateline 2014-03-19, Energy Global:
Sabah crisis sharpens focus on regional territorial disputes over oil and gas reserves
Following last year’s invasion of Malaysia’s Sabah state by a Filipino militia group, another quiet corner of the world risks being sucked into renewed territorial and ethnic disputes fuelled by a growing regional race for oil and gas reserves.
The Malaysian government responded by ordering its military to bomb the group of more than 200 members of the self-proclaimed ‘Royal Army of the Sulu Sultanate’ who briefly holed up in a village near the port of Lahad Datu. At least 70 people, including nine Malaysian security personnel, were killed in the conflict to expel the group linked to the descendants of a former royal family in southern Philippines with claims over Sabah state.
The conflict has the potential to grow as it involves groups with long-standing territorial claims, separatist ambitions and ethnic grievances now enmeshed with the US-led global war on terror, Sabah’s increasing importance as an oil and gas producer and the area’s 600 km proximity to the disputed hydrocarbon-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
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Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 