he government under Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has proposed an adjustment to the negotiation strategy with Cambodia on the overlapping claims areas (OCA) in the Gulf of Thailand, according to government officials.

The tweaking of the framework of the Thailand-Cambodia 2001 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aims to speed up talks to reach an agreement on joint extraction of petroleum resources

Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Pirapan Salirathavibhaga said his government would refocus the negotiation with Cambodia on the OCA, emphasizing joint development rather than delimitation of the territorial sea.

“We need energy from the OCA, not the delimitation of the territorial sea. It’s difficult and takes time to settle disputes over territory since no country can easily accept the change in its boundaries,” he said.

Thailand and Cambodia have claimed their respective continental shelves and territorial seas at different times and the claims were based on different laws. “Both countries have legitimate claims, so it’s hard to judge who is right or wrong,” said Pirapan, a legal expert. “If we cannot settle the dispute easily, what is the point in making it more complicated by linking the two issues together,” he said.

The MoU, jointly signed by the former Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai and the late chairman of Cambodian National Petroleum Authority, Sok An, on June 18, 2001, in Phnom Penh made clear that negotiations on delimiting territorial borders in the sea and the joint development of petroleum resources must be done simultaneously as an indivisible package.

A long history

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