KUALA LUMPUR: Sarawak came together with Sabah, Singapore, and Malaya, supposedly partners of equal status, to form Malaysia pursuant to the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), with its territory, including its own continental shelf and all attached resources, intact.
The assurances of this fact and intent in the new federation were stated clearly by the new prime minister himself (fig.1), to allay any doubt as to the nature of the union between the parties concerned: “…When the Borneo territories become of Malaysia, they will cease to be a colony of Britain, and they will not be a colony of Malaya – I thought I made it clear – they will be partners of equal status.”
Nothing was mentioned about Sarawak’s petroleum resources in the Inter-Governmental Committee Report or the subsequent Malaysia Agreement 1963. These naturally, legally and constitutionally came under the state just like land and other matters such as minerals that were included within that land.
As J C Fong, former Sarawak state attorney-general stated in his book (fig. 2), “…the two states continued to exercise rights over petroleum found within its (sic) territories, including those found offshore”. Those rights were to be taken away via the device of the Petroleum Development Act 1974, a device that, although passed by Parliament, did not follow a substantive provision of the Federal Constitution, and was therefore unconstitutional, null and void and of no legal effect.
